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This document does not meet current format guidelines Graduate School at the The University of Texas at Austin. of the It has been published for informational use only. Copyright by Yifu Wang 2016 The Thesis Committee for Yifu Wang Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis:

Space, Movement and Chinese Hand Scroll --- Reading Xia Gui and Huang Gongwang

APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE:

Michael J. Charlesworth, Supervisor

Yunchiahn Sena , Co-Supervisor Space, Movement and Chinese Hand Scroll ---Reading Xia Gui and Huang Gongwang

by

Yifu Wang, BA; MA

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree of

Master of Arts

The University of Texas at Austin May 2016 Dedication

I dedicate this work to my parents Zhang Shifang and Wang Chengwei Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my primary thesis supervisor, Dr. Michael J. Charlesworth for his intellectual support and patient guidance throughout the process of my thesis writing. In every advisory meeting we had, Dr. Charlesworth not only kept giving me insightful suggestions and valuable comments that helped me reevaluate my project from various angles, but also kept encouraging me when I went through the slow and sometimes frustrating writing process. I would like to thank the co supervisor of my thesis--also my academic advisor--Dr. Yunchiahn Sena, who not only offered me insightful comments and critiques on my research and thesis outline, but also provided me with invaluable lessons and practical advice that I will continue to benefit in the future throughout the two year of my graduate studies at the University of Texas. I am really very grateful to both Dr. Charlesworth and Dr. Sena for their patience, hard work and fast responses to my last thesis draft which I turned in a little behind the schedule. Without their support and academic advice, I wouldn't be able to finish my thesis in time. Special thanks goes to Dr. Louis Waldman and Dr. Stephennie Mulder for their useful advice, kind help and constant encouragements in different stages of my academic studies in the past two years.

I would like to thank my friends and classmates Vivian Lin and Tao Tao, whose intellectual stimulation and constant encouragement helped me survive different stages of writing. Many thanks to my other professors in the Department of Art History at UT, from whom I took various kinds of inspiring and exciting lessons that helped deepen my passion and polish my skills in doing research on art history in general and Chinese painting in particular.

I would also like to thank my family and friends. They were always supportive and encouraging me with their best wishes.

Yifu Wang

University of Texas at Austin May 2016

v Abstract

Space, Movement and Chinese Hand Scroll --- Reading Xia Gui and Huang Gongwang

Yifu Wang, MA

The University of Texas at Austin, 2016

Supervisor: Michael J. Charlesworth

Co-Supervisor: Yunchiahn Sena

My thesis discusses the significance of the horizontal format for Chinese paintings in the 13th and 14th centuries. Focusing on the issues of continuity and intimacy that are fundamental to the horizontal format, I intend to examine the functions of such a format in helping these two artists to either create the illusionistic space effect or explore the more modernist and analytical problem of spatiality in their two exceptionally beautiful long hand scrolls. In A Pure and Remote View of Streams and Mountains by the Southern Song dynasty academy painter Xia Gui, I find the issue of “view” particularly relevant: the panoramic view organized through both the atmospheric and the aerial perspectives has been very effective in helping construct the desired “poetic spaces” through dramatic juxtaposition of and rhythmic alternation between disjunctive elements of void and solid, near and far. Huang Gongwang’s Dwelling in Fuchun Mountains, on the other hand, demonstrate a more conscious effort of explore the reality of spatial relations, and a consciousness about the role of speed, the notion of process as well as the materiality of mediums and marks for our exploration of the poetics of space. Ultimately, I attempt to relate the physical continuity of the works to their temporal and material continuity as well as the intimacy of the artist’s hand. vi Table of Contents

Acknowledgement

Abstract

Introduction------1

Chapter One: The “Poetic Space” of the Horizontal Scrolls—Continuity and Temporality in the Xia Gui Scroll------6

1. Effecting the “Poetic Space”: Continuity and Progression------9

2. Narrating Nostalgia—Continuity as Temporal Progression------16

3. Intimacy, Speed and the Continuity of the Artist’s Career and Style------19

4. Colophons and the Art-historical space------26

Chapter Two: The “Poetics of Space”—Intimacy, Spatiality and Materiality in the Fu-chun scroll------29

1. Wang Xizhi, “Elegant Gathering” and the Horizontal Scroll------30

2. From Literary Gathering to Literati Gathering (or “Daoist Gathering”)------39 3. Continuity and Spatiality—Repetition, Transformation and Completion-----49

4. Intimacy, Temporality and Materiality—Geometry and Intimacy of Materials------54 5. Wang Huizhi, Shen Zhou and the Transmission of Two Masterpieces------57

Coda: The Blurry and the Fuzzy------61

Bibliography------64

Images------66

vii Introduction

It is a sad coincidence that the two best-loved long hand scrolls of Chinese landscape painting have all accidentally lost their opening sections, or their heads. While

Xia Gui’s A Pure and Remote View of Streams and Mountains (ca. early 13th century) may have suffered its loss in the hands of some careless remounter or greedy owner, according to the inscription of Emperor Qianlong on the scroll (“the artist’s signature was lost when the part of the scroll was carelessly cut off for remounting effect,” or

“漫嫌割截失名氏”), Huang Gongwang’s Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains (1350) narrowly escaped an even more atrocious disaster in the hands of one of its passionate lovers who decided to take it to his tomb but fortunately failed to carry it out, resulting in the beginning part of this scroll getting burnt and broken off, later separately collected in a different museum.

Such unfortunate happenings may not be purely coincidental, however. The very format of these two scrolls, or their exceptionally long and panoramic composition, makes it a particularly vulnerable target for such “crimes,” hence the easy loss of particularly the beginning or ending parts of the work, as in the case of the Xia Gui scroll: while the implied narrative of “lyrical journey” that James Cahill proposed may justify the current ending of the scroll, the absence of the artist’s signature normally found at the end of Xia Gui’s other hand scrolls still calls into question the validity of its current ending, which is further challenged by the clear sign of its missing a large portion of the 5 paper that had originally been (part of) the beginning sheet of this scroll, now with only

25 centimeters left of the original sheet which would otherwise be 95 centimeters. Even the more convincing ending of the Fuchun scroll, though corroborated all the while by the artist’s detailed inscription as well as its clear history of transmission, also becomes dubitable when challenged by those variant endings of a few extant imitation copies of this well-known scroll as well as that forgery copy (i.e., the “Ziming scroll”). After all, as many of such long hand scrolls are physically usually made up of several sheets of paper joined together, it is very likely that the part of paper that presumably carries the artist’s inscription was later joined to the end of the current painting rather than (its) being originally there. The authenticity of such long horizontal scrolls has therefore been more frequently problematized and easily compromised by the very format itself than in the cases of those smaller album leaves or vertical hanging scrolls, which admittedly also have their own specific authenticity problems.

This naturally brings us to the issue of space in such long horizontal scrolls that had flourished in especially the Southern Song and early Ming dynasties. The significance of water and water way that had been only secondary factor and supporting element in Northern Song monumental landscape becomes a central and structural force that has a crucial function in helping organize the spatial composition of the horizontal scroll. The void for water or sky or the snow scene and the solid representing more substantial existence became complementary in a remarkable way starting from the

Southern Song. While this remains mostly compositional in album leaves or vertical

6 hanging scrolls, it acquires a dramatic power and helps to produce a rhythmic progression in the long horizontal ones, initially in company to the explicit or implied narrative, but gradually become independent and increasingly formal in the works of amateur literati artists. As such rhythmic progression is necessarily a temporal experience of viewers who customarily unfold the scroll from its right end or its beginning with the left hand while rolling it up with the right one as the viewing activity proceeds, the issue of time becomes constitutive of such spatial experience. More interestingly, probably as the result of such rhythmic alternation between the void and the solid, the open and the closed, and between the foreground and the distance that the loss of their beginning parts does not seem to have much affected viewers’ enjoyment of the extant parts of these two scrolls.

The magnitude of their scales and the consequent conspicuity of such projects further brings us to the issue of their patronage and transmission, which naturally involved the other important aspects of time in addition to its duration, progression or extension as well as its constitutive specific moments of time, or the time of particular focalization, all of which have been hitherto defining chiefly the viewing experience. The additional aspects of time related to ownerships concerns mostly the production time

(speed) and the historical time (context). They contribute much to the production of respectively the stylistic space and the art-historical space of the artistic works.

Ultimately, the specific experience directly associated with the long horizontal scrolls are the strong sense of continuity and intimacy involved in the very activity of viewing them at a much closer distance than examining a vertical hanging scroll on the

7 wall. So dominating are these two factors in our viewing experience that the very existence of the artwork in a sense hinges on whether the scroll has been eventually rolled to its end or not and whether the exposure of every part of the work has been achieved. In this sense, it has much in common with a long novel which is expected to be able to rivet the reader’s attention, that is, which expects the reader’s fingers to be fully motivated to turn over the pages. In other words, the horizontal format equally needs preferably a certain kind of plot or narrative to propel the continual and intimate rolling of the scroll.1

This is why narrative works were often the first type of pictorial representation in almost every culture. As the artists setting out to produce such a long composition will have to take these two factors into consideration in their configuration of space and execution of textures, narrative works often became the first type of pictorial representation in almost any culture, and particularly in a culture specializing in both historical narrative and such horizontal compositions. Chinese painting is unique in its long tradition of horizontal scrolls which began of course with narrative works by the earliest well-known artist Gu Kaizhi (344-406) in the Eastern Jin dynasty, whose subjects are mostly, and very naturally, narrative ones such as Nymph of the Luo River and The

Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies. This tradition was carried on and

1 James Cahill once commented on the long horizontal scroll of Wang Ximeng’s “A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains” (), the first half or beginning part of which looks much darker or yellower than the later half. Though Cahill sees this as the result of its being less frequently viewed by people, thus proving the less exciting composition of the painting itself, this might also be seen as related to the way such a long scroll has been kept—rolled up with the later half tucked inside and better protected by the first or beginning half of the scroll—or as having been affected by the difference in quality of constituent papers. 8 flourished in the Tang dynasty art, which is still predominantly narrative, though Wang

Wei’s Wanghuan Villa scroll was considered the first hand scroll. And it was not until the

Song dynasty that the horizontal format began to be widely adopted in landscape painting, as we see from works of Xu Daoning, Wang Ximeng, Zhao Boju, Zhao

Lingrang etc.. The Southern Song dynast witnessed a more extensive interest in long horizontal projects especially among masters such as Ma Yuan and Xia Gui, while Zhao

Fu’s long scroll about the Yangtzi river as well as Mr. Li’s Dream Journey on the Xiao and Xiang were among the first to be done on paper. The literati painters in the Yuan and early Ming dynasties developed this tradition in a different direction through great works such as the Fuchun Mountains as well as those by Shen Zhou and Wen Zhengming etc.

The long horizontal format gradually declined in late Ming and Qing dynasties, but unique projects such as the 500 volumes on the “Dream Journey” subject by Cheng

Zhengkui as well as long hand scrolls of Wang Yuanqi and Gong Xian are still delightful exceptions.

Both Xia Gui and Huang Gongwang are masters in long horizontal scrolls. In addition to his masterpiece A Pure and Remote View of Streams and Mountains, which was done on paper, Xia Gui has at least two other horizontal works done on silk (12

Views of Landscape as well as the 10 Thousand Miles of the Yangtzi River scroll), with another long scroll attributed to him done on one single beautiful sheet of paper of 10 meters in length (Endless Mountains and Streams). As a literati painter in the Yuan dynasty, Huang Gongwang has two short hand scrolls besides his magnum opus Dwelling

9 in Fuchun Mountains: they are Mountains and Rivers before Rain and Clearing after

Sudden Snow. All these three horizontal works were painted on paper, while most of his vertical compositions are on silk.

10

Chapter One: The “Poetic Space” of the Horizontal Scrolls— Continuity and Temporality in the Xia Gui Scroll Xia Gui’s A Pure and Remote View of Streams and Mountains is a departure from any other long horizontal scrolls of the Southern Song period and earlier in that it does not have a clearly defined water course to structure the many views presented in the scroll, which obviously constitutes a challenge to the sustenance of the indispensible sense of continuity that provides coherence for the viewing experience. One therefore has to detect and piece together any clues that may help unify the horizontally extended composition. Unlike most other long hand scrolls such as A Landscape of Rivers and

Mountains 《江山万里图》 by Zhao Fu (赵黻, 12th -13th century) or Endless Mountains and Water by Ma Yuan 马远, or even Xia Gui’s own Yangtzi River long scroll in which a vast stretch of water has been typically introduced to conveniently provide the sense of continuity, the artist of this scroll has considerably expanded the water body placed in the central part of his work so as to form a dramatic contrast to the huge and abruptly rising cliff standing by the lake (see the attached Image 1). At the right side of this lake is a focused representation of a series of huge rocks with layers after layers of hazy hills and slopes as their background, together with the focused depiction of a temple scene with people arriving at the bridge in front of it (Fig. 1). On the left side are apparently a development of that enormous cliff at the lakeside, which first grows into the bulky mountains next to it, with misty ravines around and distant peaks visible (Fig. 2), then

11 evolves into a group of lofty mountain peaks rising above some hollow abyss right beside a forest scene with roofs of human habitation (Fig. 3). The scroll concludes with a male walking across a bridge towards a warm and busy inn-like place right ahead, a marked contrast with the scroll’s current opening which features a quiet stretch of rocky slopes and distant hills (Fig. 4).

In addition to the contrast between the vast body of water and the impressively textured huge cliff, between the warm ending and the quiet beginning, viewers will also be struck by the correspondence between the temple scene at the center of the first part and the scene around the majestic pavilion on a bridge beside a tavern that in a sense introduces the second part, both featuring busy human activities (Fig. 5). The heroic presentation of huge rocks in the first part also finds echoes first in the towering cliff beside the lake then in the group of lofty mountain peaks in the second part.

A tripartite structure could therefore be identified both here and in the whole extant composition, and it functions nicely to create the sense of continuity that provides ultimate coherence for the entire composition. There are three bridges to accompany three scenes of busy human activities, three clusters of human habitation the roofs of which are visible in distance, and next to which are three types of rocky formations consisting respectively of huge rocks in the first part, towering cliff in the middle and a group of lofty peaks in the third, and then three impressive slanting rocks possibly to denote the directions of water running besides it. Loosely fitting into this tripartite structure are also the three sections of the increasingly thinning water bodies, three

12 pavilions respectively at the lakeside, on the bridge and high above the misty abyss, with three groups of inn-like structures to the left side of the central pavilion, as well as three pairs of scholars or tourists to its right side—one pair sitting in the pavilion, another pair standing at the foot of that huge cliff, and the third or the first pair arriving in front of the temple. There are actually also three temples: in addition to the thematic first one, the second is adjacent to it on the left, and the third could be barely glimpsed on the top of that towering cliff.

Equally intriguing are those three single scholar/farmer figures: one is walking with great difficulty towards presumably another temple with imposing roofs and on the left side of the more prominent temple scene (Fig 6), the second appears to be sitting in a quiet inn to take a lunch break (Fig. 7), while towards the end of the scroll, the third one was walking across a shaky bridge in the direction of a more substantially represented inn where two other travelers were perhaps enjoying dinner in a room with a river view.

These three single male figures are delineated in a very sketchy way consisting of only a rough contour, quite consistent with the artist’s typical way of drawing human figures ( ).

They naturally forms an interesting contrast to the three pairs of scholars presumably coming from the city who are frequently portrayed as being engaged in communication, often with one’s head turning dramatically towards another scholar. Moreover, these three scholar/farmer figures appear to also go together with those three slanting rocks and three sections of water body right behind or not far away from them. Lastly, in similar grouping one could also see three cargo ships passing by the central towering cliff in full

13 sail, the other three ships moored at the bank of the lake, and three smaller boats in various activities of fishing, mooring and supposedly ferrying people to some other places (Fig. 8).

1). Effecting the “Poetic Space”: Continuity and Progression

Such a tripartite organization of the horizontal composition functions well to produce a noticeable effect of progression, which in turn is very effective in producing the sense of continuity indispensible to the viewing of long hand scrolls. And this is achieved more through the rhythmic reappearance or repetition of motifs or images of similar characters. In addition to the more regular or structural reappearance of elements within or constitutive of the tripartite structure, there is also the less regular repetition of motifs equally contributive to the effect of progression. A good example is the various groups of trees and less imposing boulders or rocky hills in the middle and background which have been frequently arranged to echo and reciprocate with each other (see Fig. 1).

There are three groups of pine trees painted in an over-refined way reminiscent of the typical academic style seen in especially Ma Yuan. The first dramatically rendered pine trees comes out from behind the powerful done huge rock in the beginning, the third is a very tall pine overhanging above the rocky slope between the creek and the inn close to the end, and the second group consists of two even more exaggeratedly executed pine

14 trees on the right side of the central pavilion not only echoing the first pine with its inclining posture but also introducing the third one at the end through its gesture of overhanging above the bridge (See Fig. 5 & Fig. 4). These three groups would have fitted into a nice tripartite structure if it has not been for their inconsistency in number which seems to have denied them this opportunity. But they still manage to reciprocate with each other in a less structured but equally rhythmic way. So is the group of rocky hills or boulders prior to the temple scene at the beginning and the other group right behind those two inns in the middle (Fig. 7): they become reciprocal by slanting uniformly in opposite directions, while the uniform posture of slanting is less pronounced among the third group of boulders or Rocky hills at the end.

Eventually, the sense of continuity as well as the rhythmic progression that manifests it becomes so dominating a factor and the tripartite structure likewise becomes so controlling, though sufficiently imperceptible, a feature that even those disjunctive

(and potentially disruptive) elements in this scroll, most of which are in a sense within or constitutive of individual parts of this tripartite structure, begin to acquire a structural rhythm, and soon get assimilated into this chorus of progression to be endowed with a sense of continuity. This happens mostly to those passages of dramatic contrasts between the vast expanse of water and the abrupt rising of the towering cliff, between misty hollows of valleys/ravines and the solid bodies of bulky mountains or high peaks, between the meticulously delineated trees or woods and the roughly contoured hill slopes or human figures, and if sometimes vertically, between the “sculpture effect” of the

15 powerfully textured rocks “directly focused” (Edwards, 48-49) in the foreground and the blurry sights of the hazy slopes, trees and hills in the middle and background. The ultimate contrast or disjunction is between the void and the solid, the constant alternation between which, in various forms, constitutes a unique and lyrical type of rhythmic progression in this horizontal composition.

To put it another way, the sense of continuity produced by both the tripartite structure and the rhythm of progression ultimately functions to organize the most dramatically disjunctive or contrasting, if not contradictory, elements which however are constitutive of the Southern Song space, and they are none other than the void and the solid. And their dramatic juxtaposition achieved with the help of the so-called “Ariel perspective” facilitates the constant alternation between the “particular focalization” of heavily textured objects-events and a comprehensive sweep of air, mist or water, and as a result enables the void to “play as positive a role as the solid masses” (Cahill, See the

Britannica). The temporal alternation and progression comes together with the structural juxtaposition in space, which is interestingly in consistence with the structure of the

Southern Song lyric poetry: the Song lyric is also called the “(alternated) long and short sentences” (“长短句”) precisely on account of the primarily structural alternation between its long and short sentences as well as the unique lyrical poetic effect born out of such dramatic contrasts.

Correlated to this alternation between or dramatic juxtaposition of void and solid is the mostly vertical juxtaposition between near and far, which is however achieved

16 chiefly through the artist’s adoption of the atmospheric perspective as well as his masterful use of ink wash or dimmer ink which is particularly effective in creating a sense of (illusionistic) space or achieving a space effect. The blurry effect wonderfully achieved through the meeting of wash and paper was highlighted when contrasted with the sharply focused foreground and its texturally sculptured rocks. And this scroll has repeatedly and regularly featured such dramatic juxtaposition of the blurry and the directly focused, most notably in the two passages prior to and closely following the temple scene, but also in both the part around the second inn to the left of the central pavilion and the ending part where distant hills and trees in the mist are seen from behind the frontal rocks and slope mass. A rhythmic progression comes out of such repeated alternation between the blurry and the focused.

The sense of continuity in this case is further reinforced and marvelously counterbalanced by the guiding effect of those slanting boulders or rocks and adjacent trees, which not only direct viewers’ attention to the background or middle ground landscape, but also facilitates a forward movement in accordance with the diagonal composition of the Southern Song space. The huge slanting rocks are apparently heroes of this scroll to have been receiving focused textural sculpturing, so to speak, hence no depiction of tree roots to distract viewers’ attention. And they appear to be propelling, or motivating, or merely indicating progression through their dramatically represented inclining or forward thrusting postures. A good example is again the two rocks at the very beginning of the extant scroll (See Fig. 1). The big and slightly slanting first rock is

17 already efficient in directing viewer’s attention to the background boulder through mostly its axe-cut texture for the right side of its surface, though less through its corresponding slanting posture, the effect of which has been sufficiently diminished by the interspersing middle ground bridging their limited correspondence. However, the more noticeably forward thrusting movement of the background boulder is soon picked up and amplified by the huge and much more prominently presented second rock perching precariously on two other smaller rocky masses both to allow three sides of its surface to become frontal and to permit some suggestions of water to be glimpsed from under its bottom side. And it further transmitted the forward thrusting movement to another similarly forward thrusting boulder in the background across a short distance of hazy void, and this is done again through both the more extensively executed axe-cut texture strokes on its right side

(and those shorter ones on the bottom) and its more dramatically rendered slanting posture.

Equally helpful in achieving such space effects are many of those trees on or around these rocks, which functions primarily to bridge the foreground and middle ground (or background) “tree-scape”, or to direct viewers’ attention to the gradually distanced or retreating layers of middle ground and background landscapes wonderfully represented in wash (thus again no roots as part of the foreground to fix viewers’ attention). But some of them would go out of their way to facilitate the forward progression set in motion by the rocks and background boulders. In the passage at the beginning of the scroll, for example, the dramatically executed pine tree coming out from

18 behind that huge slanting rock functions perfectly and powerfully to bridge the corresponding movements between the first background boulder and the second and much more impressive huge rock in the foreground. This is marvelously done through the pine tree’s own slanting posture, which beautifully connects the foreground rock and the background boulder through inclining its head in the direction of that boulder across or buffeted by a level slope in the middle ground. Moreover, the three layers of its extended branches are also aligned with the foreground, the middle ground as well as pointing to the road down in the valley not far ahead. As for those more modest trees growing either on the tops of those two background boulders or around the foreground rocks, they typically stand in support of the directions of the slanting boulders or rocks.

And the artist has also made greater space effort to develop particularly what

James Cahill calls the “positive role” of the void, mostly on the conceptual level. Not only hollowed-in places are found at the foot of the towering cliff or even on the rocky surface of the adjacent mountain in the form of “rock-hollows” (Edward, 50), and distant hills or boulders are found hollowed away supposedly in mist or haze, they eventually evolve into the similarly or equally “hollowed” parts (lost in mist) of the group high- rising mountain peaks in the later part of the scroll, which is of course preceded by the misty ravines or valleys among the central groups of bulky mountains (in distance) and the two boulders in middle ground. Similar effects are also found in the other two smaller scroll of the artist (《烟岫林居图》 and《山市晴岚图》, Fig. 10 & Fig. 11). As a conceptual development of that indistinctive cave on the rock surface which is considered

19 the very “center” of the whole scroll (Ibid.) and a central theme in the second part, the motif of “hollowedness” is further seen in the artist’s practice of keeping “hidden” or obscure a large part of the physical structure of those religious buildings and revealing only their roofs, or keeping tiny human figures “half-hidden” in an enclosed space

(houses, pavilions, caves, or in the mist etc.).

A religious and philosophical overtone could be found about the significance attached to that imperceptible cliff-side cave at the center, and this is first seen in those two tiny figures inside who appears to be engaged in a talk, perhaps philosophizing about some issue, presumably the very issue of void and solid! Being the two of those 5 figures peopled this central scene, these two cave-“dwellers” remind viewers of those two pilgrims earlier at the temple scene who are also “half-hidden” under their huge hats and similarly an unknown pair portrayed distinctively from those two scholars and the servant in front of that dense wood scene. It is significant that this cave is located even at the very physical center of the whole scroll, “just off the edge of a rugged slanting plateau” and

“to the left of a seam in the paper—physically the whole scroll being a joining of 10 sheets of paper...” (Edward, 50). At the meeting place of the steep cliff and the middle ground boulder, and hollowed-in at the originally or otherwise protruding cliff edge which both divides and connects the two “hollow” spaces of mist-swallowed ravine and valley, the cave has been so thoughtfully and subtly located that one is confused as to which side of the cliff’s surface has been hollowed in to produce this cave—an image illusion seems to be at work here—, and whether it is really a hollowed-in cave with

20 “suggestion of rock-hollows” above them, or a sort of platform held out from the cliff’s edge presumably with mist-hollowed abyss below them. And it does look like having been made by chopping off a part of the cliff edge before the remaining part gets gradually eroded and further hollowed in to evolve into a cave.

While the towering cliff here and that huge rock earlier are obviously representative of New-Confucian notion about the focused study or investigation of objects, the cave image as well as its correlated motif of hollowed space has been customarily related to the Buddhist conceptualization of space (and time), esp. the notion about emptiness/substance of the world and their interchangeability that is often expressed through (metaphysically) juxtaposing the super-detailed/sensual/substantial with the super-simplified/void, or ultimately through blurring the boundary between these two categories. This may explain why the Xia Gui tradition is found most influential in or inspiring to the Zen school of painting in late Song and later in Japan (Cahill, Hay). The true understanding of emptiness is also the central issue in, or fundamental way of, attaining enlightenment in Buddhism—again through eradicating their boundary.

2). Narrating Nostalgia—Continuity as Temporal Progression

This scroll is also unique in that, unlike most horizontal scrolls that consistently follows the direction of a structuring water way (mostly a river) from its beginning (at the right hand side) to its eventually running into the sea, the lively creek or “brook” coming

21 out of the mist at the end of this work clearly makes the end at the same time its source or beginning, thus functioning to parallel, juxtapose, and contrast the human experience of ending with the beginning of natural world. This makes better sense when we take into account this stream or creek’s earlier (in reading time) appearance in the preceding middle part when it goes under the more elaborately built bridge with a majestic and equally elaborately built pavilion and runs into the central “lake,” while also passing by another huge slanting rock as well as an inn-looking structure at its left bank. Such a repetition of motifs of rocks, bridges and inns between the ending and the middle section, which is mostly likely the continuing part of the stream right before its running into that vast lake, further confirms the function of the current ending of this scroll as the very beginning of that stream. This not only helps produce a strong sense of nostalgia, but also reminds viewers of their experience of reading a vertical hanging scroll from its foot towards its top part where the stream also comes from the mist high among the peaks and where the travelers usually reach or find their destination. In this sense, the Xia Gui scroll could be seen as an attempt in the horizontal reordering of earlier vertical representations on both the journey or travel theme (Northern Song) and the subjects of outing or the theme of late returning (Southern Song).

Moreover, the direction of the water way in this scroll, which runs counter to that of our progressive reading of the scroll, is further retrospectively confirmed in the first section of the scroll by the direction of the running water under that small stone bridge right in front of the temple, for it appears to be running in the same direction, that is,

22 running towards the right hand of the scroll, or to the scroll’s beginning. This is further seen from the presumable continuance of its course under that most impressive rock in the beginning part of the scroll, and possibly further along the valley below, judging from the valley scene ahead about its cutting low through the hills.

However, contrary to what happens at the end, people in the temple scene in the first section, especially the two scholars and the two pilgrims as well as that old man and his servant who had just got off the ship in the subsequent scene, appear to be moving in the same direction as the water running under that temple bridge, that is, moving towards the beginning of the scroll. And what complicates the matter is that the ending of the scroll in a sense also repeats this short passage about the old man and his servant closely following the temple scene in the beginning section, with their two huge rocks slanting in the same direction, with the same kind of farmer/scholar figures walking with their staff in hand and clearly with difficulty (one because of age, another because of the unsteady bridge), with distant trees barely seen in the mist from which comes out another small creek, with further layers of distant hills, and when we come closer, with the ground planes inclining towards and merging into water in both cases, and finally with the bridge across the creek at the end echoing in function the ships that has just carried the old man and his servant across the lake. Since both of these farmer/scholar figures appear to be walking towards a public space/place—an inn in the ending scene and a temple in the beginning part—with the prospect of joining other people in respectively the inn (two other travelers having dinner in a room with a river view) and the temple scene (the two

23 scholars and two pilgrims), these two parts might be narrating two kinds of journeying out: the traveling in the countryside with the inn as its regular stops and the touring or outing in the suburban area around the lake with scenic spots such as temples as its stopping places—the barely glimpsed city gate and roofs of residents inside on the other side of the lake tells viewers that these tourists come probably from the city. Hence the two different agendas of such journeys: while the suburban tour or outing tends to follow the water course to view the various scenic or cultural spots along the way, the travel deep into the rustic world often involves the task of tracing the origin of some nurturing river which makes the journey itself a retrospective exploration of its primordial source, a going back to the original state of nature that could help human being rise above our everyday existence—this might be what the title of this scroll really implies: “pure and remote” is not only about the views or its dramatic space effects that strikes viewers along the way through the artistic handling of spatial distance, but also about what such a journey intends to discover in nature.

This perhaps is why the artist makes the viewer’s progressive reading and unfolding of the scroll a nostalgic upstream journey that reverses the direction of the river’s running course—the ending and the beginning comes together twice in this scroll: the end of the scroll coincides nostalgically with the beginning of the stream, while the end of the stream runs quietly to meet the beginning of the scroll, with the expansive lake at the center possibly to symbolize the thriving city life in the 13th century southern

China. In another work of the artist which is most explicit about the theme of the

24 nostalgic later returning (《烟岫林居图》, see Fig. 9), the aged scholar is walking back to his river-side house, again in the reverse-direction of the river coming out of the mist ahead of him.

As nostalgia is ultimately a temporal issue, its introduction in this scroll is partly to emphasize, through complication, the corresponding temporal dimension of reading it as a horizontal scroll, or reading journey in a horizontal way. As progression is both a spatial and a time effect, the artist also makes a point of constantly calling viewers’ attention to not only the passage of time both as a theme (of late arriving) and as the experience involved in undertaking and narrating this journey, but also as the various moments of time that makes the journey a narrative made up of events of visiting temple, admiring the cliff, playing zither, unloading the boat, waiting for lunch, and crossing the bridge etc.. Like the dusk scene in the artist’s 12 Views scroll, the reflection of sky in the middle (Edwards, 49) and another dusk scene towards the end of this scroll, which could be at the same time a suggestion of the primordial time in nature, are subtly conveyed in ink wash.

3). Intimacy, Speed and the Continuity of the Artist’s Career and Style

Though intimacy is potentially a lesser factor in a scroll more interested in conveying after all the “remote” character of its views, it does play a remarkable role in our experience of space configuration because of precisely the horizontal format of this scroll. “The directly focused object-event” (Richard Edwards, 38) has obviously

25 contributed much to the achievement of such a sense of intimacy integral to the experience of viewing a hand scroll, and it even becomes capable of allegorizing the sense of intimacy itself by virtue of the particular focalization of its textual strokes so powerfully and intimately produced on the surface of those rocks, or by the intimacy of its sheer physical impact.

But equally effective in achieving the sense of intimacy is the author’s review of familiar motifs and subject that had appeared in his previous works, which was understandably enabled only by the long horizontal format of the scroll because of the unprecedented scope of this retrospective project. As this is probably also an unprecedented project of experimenting his art on paper, understandably with a difference, the hand scroll format becomes the best way to facilitate a selectively

“panoramic” and intimate review of the artist’s favorite motifs or life-long efforts of spatial explorations, and to make it a culminating project of synthesizing and summarizing his career.

Judging from both the visual prominence of the central pavilion on that elaborately built bridge in the middle section, and its reintroduction, as a favorite image or motif, in similar horizontal projects of later periods, such as the one by Dai Jin in early

Ming (Fig. 12), this pavilion motif has a pivotal function in bridging the predominantly water scene of the previous section and the subsequent mountain views. It may further acquire a symbolic function in bridging the artist’s earlier career represented by the extremely fine and dramatic manner of the common academy style that we see in the twin

26 pine trees as well as the first one at the beginning, and his much simplified later style concentrating on a more naively crafted rustic scene of walking or late returning farmer/scholar figures, as well as the less dramatically done groups of trees consisting of less pine and more modest and rustic local trees. This may explain why this scene about the majestic pavilion on bridge is strongly reminiscent of one of the artist’s early works— the “Gazing at the Waterfall” (《观瀑图》, Fig. 13). That earlier fan painting also focuses on a grand pavilion over a creek the source of which is presumably the waterfall they are gazing at, but no bridge is needed in this secluded place at the bottom right corner of this fan painting. There are 3 scholars in the pavilion, both of those two clearly contoured ones have their backs to the viewer, which is a very unusual sight that we also see in this horizontal scroll, and one of them extends his right arm in a similar manner of the scholar on the left side of the central bridge. The third scholar is barely visible in his quasi-frontal view, and is sitting separately on the left side of the pavilion and turning aside to listen to the other two. He is clearly the prototype of the listener in our scroll who is also slightly turning to the left and looking at the talking scholar.

The early fan painting also impresses viewers with those two tall and leafy pine trees at both sides of the pavilion (See Fig. 5). They are clearly also the prototypes of those two dramatically done pine trees in out hand scroll, which are however moved to one side of the central bridge. But they are represented in a strikingly similar posture as the more realistically delineated ones in the fan painting: the two leaning pines in each work have two branches or trigs twisted in the same dramatic way, and their top branches

27 are all forcefully twisted to the right. The two erecting ones also struck viewers with a marked similarity in both their postures and the particular treatment of their tops and especially roots: both are bare above the ground. Additionally, there is also a boat moored at the left side of the pavilion, but in the horizontal scroll, there are three people busy unloading the boats.

The three bigger sailing boats on the central lake, however, possibly come from another fan painting in Boston museum with the title of Sailboat in Rainstorm

(《风雨行舟图》, Fig. 14). All of them are on full sail, though in the fan painting the boatman is rowing or simply working at the tail of that single boat on water, but only one boatman is seen on one of those three sailing boats on the lake.

Rocks are the heroes in the first part of the horizontal scroll, and they are also the hallmark achievement in most of the artist’s works, most notably the hanging scroll at

MET with the debatable title of Mountain Market or (《山市晴岚图》, Fig. 10). In both scrolls, huge rocks are directly focuses in the foreground, with creeks and roads along the side of the rock, and with a solitary farmer figure walking across the bridge in front of the huge slanting rock marvelously sculptured with the artist’s trademark axe-cut texture strokes—precisely what we see at the end of our hand scroll. The smaller rocks in the river, however, look much like those in the hanging scroll Rapids in a Mountain Valley

(《山谷激流图》, Freer Gallery of Art, Fig. 15), though the bigger standing one looks a bit different despite their common slanting postures.

28 There are a lot more in common between the only two reliable horizontal works of the artist, and both are breath-takingly beautiful characterized by masterfully constructed poetic space. The well-known “12 Views of Landscape” in Kansas City

(《山水十二景图》) is brilliantly painted on silk, unfortunately only 4 of the 12 views are extant, again similar to our equally incomplete “A Pure and Remote View”. Despite all the similarities to be numerated in the following, viewers seem to face different tasks in front of these two works: he/she is expected to identify and isolate individual views promised in the silk scroll, but one tends to look for a controlling structure so as to build

ONE, possibly because of the “A”, unified view of all the brilliantly done passages in this paper scroll. Hence the strong sense of continuity in its persistent progression.

This is probably because of the different agendas for these two projects: the “12 Views” is an imperial court commission with the designated task of accompanying the 12 poetic images, while this paper scroll might also be a self-assigned project to summarize his life career. Anyway, in at least these extant 4 views, we find the distant view of city gate in the last view (Fig. 15, 《山水十二景图 ·烟堤晚泊》), the distant village in the second view (Fig. 16. 《山水十二景图 · 烟村归渡》), the slightly tilting broad rocky slope at the end of the paper scroll in the third view (Fig. 17, 《山水十二景图 · 渔笛清幽》), though in opposite direction, the two small boats on the lake (one fishing, another ferrying), the small mooring boat as well as the vast expanse of water, all in the third view (Fig. 18 《山水十二景图 · 渔笛清幽》), but the large mooring ship at the bank seems to come from the last view where it similarly moored next to the city gate, with the 29 two farmer walking laboriously towards the ship being replaced by that old farmer/scholar figure laboring towards the second temple, with his servant following him.

More demonstrative of this agenda is the solitary farmer/scholar figure at the end of our paper scroll which has been so repeatedly seen in about 5 of the artist’s small album leafs and fan paintings that it comes to embody the lyrical theme of nostalgic “late returning” proposed by James Cahill. With the exception of the old man with staff in the fan painting under the title of《烟岫林居图》 in Beijing (Fig. 23), the other four works—two album leaves of landscape in Tokyo (the two 《山水图》 at

东京国立博物馆, Fig. 20 & Fig. 21 ) and the two fan paintings 《遥岑烟霭图》 (in

Beijing, Fig. 19) and a snow work (in Japan) for the type of which Xia Gui reputedly specializes, like the horizontal format—all seem to have the unmistakable farmer figure, frequently loaded with something on shoulder, coming back from work and at different stages of passing a bridge leading to his modest lodge or a tavern-like public space, which in due time evolved into that (late) arriving farmer/scholar figure at the end of our scroll.

Last but most significant is the central towering cliff beside the lake. One would be amazed to find its probable allusion to an equally impressive steep and high-rising cliff in a landscape work authenticated by Wang Duo (《山水轴》, 王铎鉴定, Fig. 22).

Despite the fact that the hanging scroll is a snow work, they are similar also in their axe- cut texture strokes, the hollowed-in places near their feet, the roads leading to the top or upper sections which have only a suggestion of the temple either hidden among trees at

30 half height or having their roofs barely visible above the tree tops. The quotation of this most powerfully produced image speaks eloquently about the agenda of this long horizontal scroll, and rarely have we found such powerful expression of mountain cliff with such grandeur by virtue of its sheer volume and daunting height—the cliffs in both

Xiao Zhao, Wu Yuanzhi and even Xu Daoning are comparatively lower in height and even less in grandeur.

All of these could either prove that this scroll is an authentic work of Xia Gui himself, or suggest the alternative possibility of its being the hand of an Academy artist colleague who happened to be familiar with so many of his works, which is less likely except in the case of his son Xia Sen who however had no extant work known. It is therefore again very likely that the artist appears to be experimenting with the new medium of paper by recycling his previous motifs or subjects which had all been crafted on silk in the past. As the imperial court is more likely to be the one who provided paper, this scroll could still be a work of court commission.

The adoption of paper as its new medium, however, may also affect the issue of intimacy in a different way. Xia Gui was said to be a fast painter who likes to use thick ink and blunt-tipped brushes which has been indeed effective in overpowering the artfulness of silk as a craft. Since paper is more absorbent of ink, an even faster execution than his usual practice of working on silk apparently befits this new medium, especially for a professional painter who, unlike more educated literates, hasn’t had much experience of working with paper. And this in turn makes it necessary for the artist to

31 resort to the more expedient way of conveniently recycling his previous motifs and subject rather than spending time to come up with new subjects and details for every part of the composition. Understandably this will make a difference to the style of his only work on paper—with less ink and more wash, with texture strokes adjusted to be thinner and shorter, and with less attention paid to the rustic looking exposure of coarse roots for his trees and more to their refined top branches, the continuity or consistency of his style has been significantly challenged.

But this will further necessitate an even greater tendency to explore the possibility of reutilizing previously produced motifs, subjects and themes, in order to produce, introduce, sustain the kind of intimacy one experiences at seeing old acquaintances. And this may further involve the necessity of refining them for new purposes, as in the case of those two pine trees to the right of the central pavilion where the artist had to readjust his way of expression. As this concerns mostly his pictorial language which seems to have become more refined and less evocative or reflective of the naivety and simplicity that characterizes many of his mature works on silk, his style accordingly becomes closer to the general academy style which tends to be adjusted into a more public language than the unique personal one found in his previous works.

4). Colophons and the Art-historical space

As was made possible by the format of long horizontal scroll, the poetic space of the pictorial work tends to be continued and even get extended into or developed in the poems and colophons added to the end of the scroll. In other words, the sense of

32 continuity tends to get nicely prolonged into an art-historical space which is essentially as endless or unlimited as the horizontal format permits or could afford to add. The term of colophon itself extends and expands the continuity of the scroll through both its conceptual connotation of endless followed-up passages in the open-ended space of art history, and its physical denotation of the continual extension of lines after lines of colophon sentences from its right hand side, or where the pictorial representations end, to its forever retreating left hand side. And the intimacy derived from rereading about the artist as well as the work itself through those reciprocating colophons considerably enriches the initial intimacy of initially working with the scroll, which naturally further enhances both the charm of the art work and the aesthetic pleasure of repeatedly reading and interpreting it.

This is perhaps what one experiences when reading the colophons of Chen Chuan and Pin Xian at the end of the scroll. Both were written in early Ming dynasty, almost

200 years after the artist. Chen Chuan’s colophon consists of a poem about his viewing experience of and aesthetic response to this scroll, followed by a passage in prose about the circumstance of his acquaintance of this work as well as how he personally related to it (“My home[town]”). The poem and the prose passage further reciprocate each other to sustain the continuity of their authorship, particularly with the same introductory phrase

“My home(town)” (“我家” and “余家”) at the beginning of both sections. The sense of intimacy is even more emphatically conveyed through such direct relation to similar landscapes at the viewer’s home.

33

Ping Xian’s colophon continues this tradition both physically and inter-textually when he wrote out his passage right behind Chen’s and further states that he was responding to Chen’s colophon by writing in the same rhyme scheme to “show his respect and admiration (of Chen)”. Moreover, when he further refers / alludes, in his poem, to the Xia Gui tradition in art, he employs the term “father and son” together with their names () to stress that it is a family tradition, with the clear indication of the continuity in their styles. This happens to support my suggestion about the possibility of its being the work of the son, though it is also very likely to be just a customary way of referring to this particular well-known tradition of the Southern Song art. But when his poem ends by referring again to the father and son as “these two venerable (artists)”

(“二老”), one can’t help wondering if this is a particular way of suspecting its being the hand of the son instead of the father. This was also readdressed in the third colophon by

Emperor Qianlong, which was more an inscription put right at the top of the temple scene, by again referring to the family tradition “the Xia family style” (“夏家家法”).

Either way, viewers/readers become certain about the continuity of the family tradition in this scroll, which, however, might well be a veiled way of praising the family tradition in art collection of the author’s “patron” at the time he wrote this colophon, who was then the current owner of this painting (Zhang; to be further explained in footnote)—the Duke of Mu family ruling the South west Yunnan province in early Ming dynasty. After all, ownership is a way of making possible the work’s continual function in art history, as the

34 term “transmission” indicates, also as the Ping Xian’s opportunity of ever seeing this painting proves or confirms.

Such sustained continuity in art history further extends to the inheritance of the

Xia Gui tradition or style in history. And Ding Yefu, a minority painter (born in Central

Asia) in the Yuan dynasty, is generally seen, along with Sun Junze, as a faithful follower of the Xia Gui and Ma Yuan style. As Ding was also a close friend of Ping Xian who was originally from Qiantang area, or around Hangzhou, the metropolitan city where Xia

Gui’s vast lake is located (Note: West Lake), the continuity of the artist’s tradition is nicely outlined. More significantly, since Ping Xian was also a close friend of Wang Fu in early Ming who, like Xia Gui, specialized in long horizontal scrolls, the transmission of the horizontal tradition has also been delineated, for Wang Fu once did a close copy of

Xia Gui’s long horizontal scroll about the Yangtze river on the different medium of paper, thus no doubt a good follower of the Xia Gui tradition in horizontal format.

35 Chapter Two The “Poetics of Space”—Intimacy, Spatiality and Materiality in the Fu- chun scroll: Unlike Xia Gui’s “poetic space” constructed with sheer illusionistic power,

Huang Gongwang’s majestic “Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains” has a different agenda of exploring the very “poetics of space,” so to speak, or the issue of spatiality rather than the wonderful space effect in the Xia Gui scroll. It is basically a continuance of Yuan literati artists’ effort in understanding “the reality of spatial relationship,” as John Hays put in his dissertation on this horizontal Fuchun scroll (156).2 This was initiated by Zhao

Mengfu’s attempt in reintroducing the Dong Yuan tradition so as to achieve a

“conceptual clarity” about this issue of spatiality: “He looks much more analytically at the nature of contour and surface, of rough and smooth textures. … the mixing of dry and wet ink values is carefully calculated in the building of forms” (59). Eventually, such a clarity is achieved when “the surface acquires depth”: “The far distance, … recedes through the gradual lightening of horizontal ground lines, each of which still retains its clarity” (Hay, 60).

And such analytical activation or actualization of the surface into space, mostly through painted spatial texture, is precisely what Huang Gongwang has been further experimenting with not only this culminating Fuchun project, but also his smaller though not necessarily earlier works in his career. If the atmospheric perspective and the

2 Expressions such as “the Fuchun scroll”, “the horizontal Fuchun project” and “Fuchun Mountains” have been used interchangeably as shortened terms for the full title of the artist’s long horizontal scroll “Dwelling in Fuchun Mountains.” 36 disjunctive spaces of near and far, void and solid have sufficiently destroyed distant forms and picture plane in the Southern Song style, a respect for surface and texture reality in the Yuan has helped to reconstruct form and restore picture plane to the effect that space as distance becomes a new reality: with “series of stepped contours” (Hay,

153) to suggest depth, transition has been made from verticality to horizontality.

1). Wang Xizhi, “Elegant Gathering” and the Horizontal Scroll

Among the nine paintings of Huang Gongwang that are generally considered authentic or reliable copies, the two vertical scrolls, one on the theme of dwelling

(“Mountain Dwelling” of 1349, or 《水阁清幽图》 at Nanjing Museum, Fig. 23),3 another about the Fuchun subject (“Great Peak of Fuchun,” or 《富春大岭图》, probably before 1347, also at Nanjing Museum, Fig. 24), might have functioned as

“experimental” works to help prove to the artist about the validity of horizontal / option of the horizontal composition for his grand Fuchun project in progress. This is first of all because these two are the only of Huang’s works that deviate from the norm of his signing and dedicating practice, as the first scroll lacks the recipient dedication and the second not only fails to indicate the time of production but also put the names of the artist and the recipient side by side in a very unusual way—and strangely, very similar to Zhao

Mengfu’s way of signing his calligraphic piece (“快雪时晴”, or “Clearing After Sudden

Snow”) as a gift to Huang Gongwang. The artist’s inscriptions on the second scroll is

3 “The Pure and Quiet Waterside Studio” (“水阁清幽”) is probably the name assigned to this scroll by the Nanjing Museum. According to Zhao Xuanye‘s research, two other names seem to have been used in history for this single work: “Mountain Dwelling” and “Summer Mountain”. 37 particularly unusual also in that its title, which is already a rare presence on Huang’s works, has been put in an isolated manner at the top-right corner of the scroll, at quite a distance from his signature and recipient dedication at the left, while elsewhere the artist typically has a substantial inscription or colophon for such information. As a matter of fact, some scholars even come to question the authenticity of this work precisely on the basis of its departure from his normal way of writing his title and signature, though its unique pictorial style is another factor that challenges its reliability.

All this may reasonably suggest that these two scrolls could have ended up being left with the artist himself who probably had become dissatisfied with them, rather than having been received by their recipients as were intended (the first “Mountain Dwelling” doesn’t even have any indication of recipient), no matter how incredible this may sound, judging from the typically less serious attitude of amateur scholars about their works. The other possibility is that it may have been done when the mood struck the artist, and later taken away by some art lover (“好事者”) as in the case of the artist’s Streams and

Mountains before Rain 《溪山雨意》 (Fig. 25). Though the second scroll (“Great Peak of Fuchun”) is dedicated to “Furu,” whose name is Shao Hengzhen, a literary figure in late Yuan who specialized in writing lyric and theatre poetry (词和曲), it is very likely that the artist later changed his mind, for its recipient has never acknowledged, in his oeuvres, that he has ever received this scroll. Shao Hengzhen had otherwise recorded substantially not only Huang’s frequent visit of him and their exchange of poems, but more significantly Shao’s own poems on many paintings he had viewed, including the 38 “Snow Clearing over Nine Peaks” (《九峰雪霁图》, 1349, at the Palace Museum in

Beijing. Fig. 26) and a fan painting by the artist—Shao is also the one who wrote the first colophon on Xia Gui’s “12 Views”. Stylistically, since these two works, currently both among the prized collections of the Nanjing Museum, were all painted with wet brush strokes (“湿笔”), and were both on paper, they probably had functioned to suggest to the artist about (in the case of “Great Peak of Fuchun), or later convince him of (in the case of “Mountain Dwelling”), a different and more advisable way of structuring his masterpiece, that is, the opposite and more feasible way of representing both the Fuchun subject and the dwelling theme in a horizontal composition and with dry brushstrokes on paper.

And these are precisely what the artist further intended to prove to himself with the three snow works done in the same year of 1349, and with the horizontal “Clearing

After Sudden Snow” (《快雪时晴图》, at National Museum of China, Fig. 27) in particular—and he seems to find it necessary to do this when he was halfway through his magnum opus. Since the other two (“Snow Clearing over Nine Peaks” and “Visiting Dai on the Shan Creek”, or 《剡溪访戴图》 at Yunnan Provincial Museum, Fig. 28 ), which were done in that spring thus probably earlier than the horizontal Sudden Snow, are both vertical works on silk, and all three of them employs dry brushstrokes, Huang seems to have done these three snow works to test the validity of the dry brushstroke technique which he had been putting into extensive use in his grand Fuchun scroll at hand, and in this sense experimental for this culminating horizontal project on paper (the long and 39 intermittent working process of which obviously had allowed the artist to constantly test any techniques he deemed appropriate to this summarizing work of his life), for in the third scroll (《快雪时晴图》) , which is horizontal and on paper, the soft and delicate dry brushstrokes help produce a marvelous and powerful effect of the spatial structure of rocks and mountains.

More significantly, in the third snow work Huang’s effort in providing a pictorial representation to accompany his teacher Zhao Mengfu’s calligraphic gift to him, which consists of the four thematic characters from the most famous calligrapher Wang Xizhi’s

王羲之short masterpiece the “Clearing After Sudden Snow” manuscript

(《快雪时晴帖》, 4th century), could be seen as indicative of his own ambition of modeling his horizontal Fuchun project on a similarly long work of the sage calligrapher, actually the longest and greatest of Wang’s calligraphic masterpieces—the legendary manuscript of “The Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion”, or

《蘭亭集序》 (Fig. 29). In other words, Huang’s ambition is to make his ongoing

Fuchun project as great a masterpiece as Wang Xizhi’s Orchid Pavilion manuscript— while both Huang’s “Sudden Snow” painting (《快雪时晴图》) and the two calligraphic

“Sudden Snow” pieces (《快雪时晴帖》) by Wang Xizhi and the artist’s teacher Zhao

Mengfu are all beautiful short works, Huang’s grand Fuchun project and Wang’s great

Orchid Pavilion manuscript are both breath-taking long horizontal compositions.

Moreover, if the sage calligrapher’s highest achievement in life (i.e. the Orchid Pavilion manuscript) has become Huang’s goal of aspiration and source of inspiration, then 40 Huang’s teacher Zhao Mengfu’s many horizontal paintings has also played the role of a precursor to further inspire and help bring into being his diligent student’s epoch-making

Fuchun project, interestingly in the same way of Zhao’s being acclaimed the head of the

“Four Great Masters of Yuan” before his name was later substituted by that of his student, partly because of precisely the high status of the Fuchun scroll in art history.

The validity of seeing Wang Xizhi’s Orchid Pavilion manuscript as the model of

Huang’s horizontal Fuchun scroll both in format and in artistic power could be proved not only by Huang’s inclusion of the well-known episode of Wang Xizhi watching geese as the climatic passage of the long Fuchun scroll, but also by his pictorial rendition, in

Visiting Dai Kui on the Shan Creek, of that fascinating historical anecdote about Wang

Huizhi, who was the fifth son of the sage calligrapher, thus constituting again a variation on the Wang Xizhi motif. More interestingly, judging from his one-time job in divination and his knowledge and interest in this area, Huang Gongwang might have also intended or planned to finish this Fuchun scroll by 1353, three extra years beyond the year in which he inscribed and promised this work to its first recipient Wuyong, but exactly 1000 years after Wang Xizhi wrote his peerless Orchid Pavilion manuscript—and I believe

Huang // he would have done anything to be able to meet this deadline, and he would have indeed carried it out by that time, judging from the generally accepted time of 3-7 years spent on the production of this masterpiece. As Huang died in 1354 at the age of

86, he would have tried his best not to die before the work is completely done, and preferably before 1353 when he would have had to put a stop to this project in order for it 41 to ac// intermittent production of this work complish its magnificent mission of rivaling in history with Wang Xizhi’s Orchid Pavilion manuscript.4 In this sense, the time devoted to the actual production, however intermittently it may be, could be revised into

3-6 years (1347-1353), that is, by either the time when he inscribed this work to Wuyong, or the time which means so much to an admirer of Wang Xizhi the calligrapher, and a diviner at the same time. And it is an exciting discovery to know that the date of 1353 as the actual time of the artist’s completing his magnum opus had also been proposed by

Wang Yuanqi, one of the “Four Wangs” in early Qing dynasty and a great admirer of

Huang’s paintings, especially the pictorial wonder of the Fuchun scroll, of which he had made as many as 5 or 6 imitation copies.

Ultimately, Huang’s effort of accomplishing his magnum opus has helped establish the same kind of canon or tradition for literati painting as the Six Dynasties style represented by Wang Xizhi’s works has done for Chinese calligraphy—a free and natural elegance that characterizes both the Eastern Jin calligraphy and the Yuan painting, with the long continuous flow of unparalleled exquisite calligraphic and pictorial marks that make up the enchanting textual space of both the Orchard Pavilion manuscript and the Fuchun scroll. It is significant that the episode of Wang Xizhi

4 And the artist’s aspiration has eventually materialized miraculously not only in the form of Zou Zhilin’s colophon to this horizontal Fuchun scroll proclaiming its status of being the Orchid Pavilion in Chinese painting, but also through one of its owner Wu Wenqing’s crazy attempt in emulating Emperor Tang Taizong’s silly act of taking the invaluable Orchid Pavilion manuscript to his tomb—Wu in his deathbed also tried to put his beloved Fuchun scroll to fire exactly 300 years after the artist wrote his enigmatically prophetic colophon at the end of the scroll.

42 watching geese happens to be also the most exciting passage in which the artist demonstrated his supreme skill in creating his rich and subtle textures for painting trees, foliage, waves and mountain slopes—the brush technique that the sage calligrapher had reputedly learned from watching geese seems to have also been put into wonderful use here by Huang in this passage of unsurpassed beauty. From then on, brushwork has become the key criterion for the artistic value of Chinese painting as it has long been for calligraphy.

And like the group of geese constituting a list of the character Zhi “之” in its various postures in Huang’s climatic passage, marvelously echoing the twenty “之” characters in the Orchard Pavilion manuscript, those two anglers in the painting also counterbalance with each other at the two sides of both the tree group and the pavilion in a posture amazingly similar to that character “之”, which happens to be also the hallmark character and last word in the names of Wang Xizhi and his seven sons. Moreover, in so far as Chinese scholars tend to equate the life style of fishermen/angler with the ideal life style of freedom and reclusion, the scholar figure inside the pavilion apparently also aspires to the life of fishermen by assimilating their “之”-like angling postures in the same manner of Wang Xizhi learning calligraphic techniques from the graceful movements of geese on water. Thus while history tells the story of Wang Xizhi learning from the geese, in this passage Huang seems to be presenting the more likely procedure of this learning process: first the geese intuitively move their bodies, or pose, in the shape of the character “之”; then the fishermen/anglers, as the Daoist ideal figure living the 43 most natural way of life, unconsciously imitate or follow, or have internalized, the geese’s graceful and natural movement to better (that is, more comfortably and more efficiently) perform their work in the posture of both the geese and that “之”; lastly the scholar is inspired and consciously assimilating the fishermen’s “之”-like angling action or posture.

Such a more reciprocal relation between nature, the Daoist way or ideal, and human being is also seen in Wang Xizhi’ reason of naming his seven sons and more than

20 grandsons with the same character-word “之”, which, like the Daoist angling posture, may simply function to mediate this mutually interactive relation in the universe.

According to the Chinese historian Chen Yingque in his essay “Cui Hao and Kou

Qianzhi,”5 this character-word “之” has been traditionally used, as the last word, in the names of believers and practitioners of one of the earliest Daoist orders called “Tianshi

Dao” or the “Heaven-Master Dao” (“天师道”), a very influential Daoist sect in the Six

Dynasties, especially the Eastern Jin period.6 By adopting this character-word “之” in the names for of his sons and grandsons, Wang Xizhi indicates that his family believed in and followed the practice or doctrines of this school of Daoism. And the very name of this Daoist order suggests its principle of taking heaven, which is another name for

Nature, as its master, This is actually a basic idea of Daoist thought in general, and this notion is nicely embodied in the natural grace of Wang Xizhi’s calligraphy.

5 See陈寅恪, 《崔浩与寇谦之》,《金明馆丛稿初编》, 三联书店, 2001. 6 The “Six Dynasties” (222-589) and “Eastern Jin (Dynasty)” (317-420) are frequently used interchangeably to refer to basically the same historical period of the shorter span (Eastern Jin), 44 Not only Daoism is the prevailing religious thought in the Six Dynasties period,

Daoist philosophy or Daoist thought expressed in the classical works of pre-Qin philosophers such as Laozi (Lao Tzu, or the Tao Te Ching) and Zhuangzi (or Chuang

Tzu) also constitute the basic canons to inspire the so-called “philosophical talk” that was fashionable among intellectuals of the Six Dynasties period. While Dai Kui to whom

Wang Huizhi paid an un-actualized visit on that snowy night was a well-known exponent of Daoist, Buddhist and Confucian thoughts as well as an acclaimed sculptor of Buddhist images, Wang Huizhi’s attitude about his visit is a perfect embodiment of the ideal of the natural, unrestrained and carefree behaviors or personality valued by Six Dynasties intellectuals. More significantly, the cursive style of calligraphy represented by his father

Wang Xizhi’s great Orchid Pavilion manuscript best epitomizes the intellectual vogue of that period through precisely its stylistic advocation of a free and natural elegance: the characters in this manuscript have been naturally arranged and written according to whatever space that happened to become available to them, which is why they are able to always pose gracefully in any shapes and sizes befitting their spatial and even literary contexts. There are even characters being overwritten or blotted out on second thought in the process of writing that manuscript, which could have been considered elsewhere as being totally unfitting in a piece of calligraphic artwork.

But it finds a perfect follower in Hunag Gongwang’s Fuchun Mountains, which is similarly full of passages of constant revisions, reworking, cuttings and adding, overpainting, dashed off passages, and of course the initial rapid composition which 45 makes necessary all the subsequent revisiting. In his well-known inscription, the artist gives us a detailed account of his working process: “… On a leisure day in the South

Tower, I took up my brush and drew the whole scroll. Such was my exhilaration that I was not conscious (of the passage of time), but untiringly laid out the entire composition,

(later) coming back again and again to fill in and develop details [In a variant translation:

Moreover, whenever I need to eradicate anything, I would fill in what I cut out]. Three or four years later, it had still not been finished. This was because it had remained in

(Fuchun) mountains, while I had been freely wandering elsewhere. Now I have especially picked it up, and put it in my travelling bag. Morning and evening, whenever I can catch a free moment, I can add some more brushwork. …” (Cahill, 1976: 111; & Hay, 13-14).7

The overall quite leisured and much prolonged process of its production, in this respect very different from the Orchid Pavilion manuscript which was done in one sitting while

Wang Xizhi was half drunk on the occasion of that gathering, exemplifies the ideal case of free and untrammeled artistic creation, thus also different from Xia Gui’s speed which is more a working habit or, as in the case of A Pure and Remote View, is an expedient way of working with the new medium of paper. But the artist did have his moment of executing a work in high speed; and this happened when he was “painting a landscape album leaf in a very sketchy manner in 1352” (Cahill, 1988: 82).

7 The original Chinese version reads: “至正七年 僕歸富春山居 無用師偕往暇日於南樓援筆，寫成此卷。興之所至，不覺亹亹布置如許。 逐旋填剳，閱三、四載，未得完備。蓋因留在山中，而雲遊在外故爾。 今特取回行李中，早晚得暇，當為著筆。無用過慮，有巧取豪敚者，俾先識卷末，庶使知其 成就之難也。十年，青龍在庚寅，歜節前一日，大癡學人書于雲間夏氏知止堂.” 46 2). From Literary Gathering to Literati Gathering8 (or “Daoist [Temple] Gathering”)

The artist’s attraction to the Wang Xizhi motif is not pure theoretical and textual reconstruction, however. Not only Yuan dynasty is the second period in which Daoism becomes the more powerful religious thought than Buddhism and Confucianism, many intellectuals in the Yuan also found themselves outsiders in or unemployed by a government serving the Mongol rulers, so they found it necessary to join various Daoist orders for a living or for spiritual peace. Huang Gongwang is one of those who joined the most influential Daoism order “Preservation of All Self” (“Quanzhen Jiao”, or “全真教”) after being disillusioned by his disastrous brief period of government service.

In this context, his decision to introduce the Wang Xzhi theme into his Fuchun project is not only natural, but may also been the result of his close association with his literary and artist friends such as Yang Weizhen杨维祯,Ni Zan 倪赞 and Zhang

Yu张雨etc., many of whom either self-addressed as a “Daoist” (“草玄道人” 杨维祯), or closely associated with Daoism (Ni Zan’s brother practiced Daoism), or actually became a Daoist for a period in life (Zhang Yu). And it was specifically occasioned by his encounter in 1348 with an earlier Yuan painter Qian Xuan’s 钱选hand scroll Dwelling in

8 The terms Literates or literati have been employed to replace the term “scholar officials” as more accurate expressions to categorize those local scholars in the Yuan and Ming dynasties who are not high government officials, thus only having local or limited influence. 47 the Floating Jade Mountains (Fig. 31), which may have not only encouraged Huang to continue with his horizontal Fuchun project which was started around 1347, but also inspired him to pay homage to the sage calligrapher by integrating the Wang Xizhi motif and instituting it at the very center of that scroll, making it a central climatic moment of our viewing experience—or even encouraged him to further try his hands on that two vertical snow paintings the next year (1349), as Birgitta Augustin suggests in her 2012 essay.

Huang saw this painting of Qian Xuan at the place of his calligrapher friend and

Daoist colleague Zhang Yu 张雨who newly acquired it at a bookstore, and he wrote a long colophon right behind that of Zhang Yu to mark this significant occasion. As Huang, according to his own colophon, must have been familiar with the works of Qian Xuan who was the friend and “teacher” of Huang’s teacher Zhao Mengfu, it would be justified to infer that he also knew about or at least heard of another well-known hand scroll of

Qian, “Wang Xizhi Watching the Geese,” (Fig. 30-1 & Fig. 30-2) as well as his

“Mountain Dwelling” scroll (Fig. 32) —all three hand scrolls of Qian are in horizontal format and crafted in blue-and-green colors on paper. And it could not be far-fetched to further infer that Huang would naturally find it an attractive idea and feasible plan to integrate the Wang Xizhi motif with the theme of mountain dwelling if he had not done so by 1348, and to transform the Daoist paradise theme associated with the Eastern Jin religious view and with the blue and green color scheme which is what John Hay is interested in (Hay, 289) into the ideal of artistic and spiritual grace represented by Wang 48 Xizhi’s life and arts in the same period. And again according to Birgitta Augustin, it is probably also this encounter with Qian’s Dwelling in the Floating Jade Mountains that had encouraged him to paint those three snow works in the following year (1349), in a remarkably different style reminiscent of the archaic geometric forms in the Qian Xuan painting he inscribed the previous year.

On the other hand, in so far as his earliest hand scroll the Streams and Mountains before Rain (《溪山雨意》, prior to 1344) appears to have incorporated the Daoist idea of cloudy mountain, and the Clearing after Sudden Snow was made probably for a patron

(Mo Chang, 莫昌) with certain Daoist training (Chen Yun-ru, 208-9), and finally the artist’s inscription at the end of his great Fuc-chun scroll clearly dedicated it to his Daoist colleague and travel companion Wu-yong, there may exist a kind of association or connection between the Daoist patronage and the horizontal format that the artist had employed FOR the above three hand scrolls ONLY—the artist’s inscription on his

Streams and Mountains before Rain seems to indicate it was done at a gathering occasion when somebody brought him two sheets of high-quality paper and got a famous brand of ink ready in a special inkstand, and also with some art lover present who later took away the scroll as soon as it was done or even before it was completely done.9 And more likely, the horizontal format may have a lot to do with the more specific theme of “Daoist gathering” that the artist’s friend Zhan Yu alluded to in one of his poems (Chen Yun-ru

9 The original inscription of the artist reads: “此是仆数年前寓平江光孝时，陆明本将佳纸二幅，用大 陀石研郭忠厚墨。此纸未毕，已为好事者取去。今复为世长所得。至正四年十月，来溪上足其意。 时年七十有六，是岁十一月哉生明识“ 49

207), or with the theme of literati gathering in general at which the artist has been an active participant. At least in the case of his Fuchun scroll, this could be precisely where and why the Wang Xizhi motif becomes relevant and even pivotal, for not only Wang’s

Orchid Pavilion manuscript was exactly the product of the most famous literati gathering in history that took place at the place of Orchid Pavilion on Mount Kuaiji almost a thousand years ago in 353, subsequent pictorial renditions of the gathering subjects by Li

Gonglin, Ma Yuan and others all naturally adopted the horizontal format.

In history, the “Orchid Pavilion” gathering also became a prototype for the kind of elegant gathering not only fashionable among the elite or influential scholar officials uch as the “Gathering at the Ten Thousand Willow Studio” (“萬柳堂雅集), the “Snow

Studio Gathering” (雪齋雅集) etc, or even the gathering hosted by the Princess

Dachang (大长公主) of the royal family (Chen, 207) in early Yuan, but also popular in the circle of the artist’s Daoist and literati friends, many of which are patrons or recipients of Huang’s artistic works. More importantly, the introduction of this gathering theme could also help build a nice narrative for the otherwise quite puzzling distribution of human figures in this painting, with two scholars walking across bridges at respectively the beginning and the ending part of the scroll toward the Wang Xizhi-like scholar at its center watching geese, and with two pairs of fishermen (or anglers) and one woodcutter placed adjacent to these three scholars perhaps to not only address its Daoist element or ideal of reclusion but also indicate its departure from the Li Gonglin and Ma

Yuan renditions of this subject of elegant gathering, here integrated with the theme of

50 reclusive mountain dwelling—the Daoist assimilation of the Yan Ziling 严子陵 heritage of reclusion or retreat (into the Fuchun mountains) began to participate in the tradition of literati gathering, which is strongly reflective of the cultural life of the late Yuan literati many of whom had joined or were affiliated with the Daoist church, thus consequently also reflective of the enormous influence of Daoist culture in Yuan society .

The implicit gathering theme also works well with the type of “landscape of property” of which this Fuchun scroll is considered exemplary by virtue of its “personal association” (Clunas, 1996: 156) with both the artist and the recipient—it is after all quite understandable to associate the locale of a gathering scene with the property of the host or the recipient. And the Jiangnan area in late Yuan had witnessed quite a few well- known cases of literati gathering at the estates of Gu Ying 顧瑛 (the Jade Mountain retreat, or more specifically the “Thatched Hall of Jade Mountain”, or玉山草堂), Lu

Shanfu卢山甫 (The “Pavilion of Listening to Rain”, or 听雨楼), Cao Zhibai 曹知白 (the

“Wa-ying Studio”, or 漥盈轩), Ni Zan倪瓒 (the “Qingmi Studio”, or 清閟阁), Yang

Weizhen杨维祯 (the “Caoxuan Studio”, or 草玄阁), or even Zhang Yu who called his apparently more modest gathering of his Daoist friends and local literati the “Daoist

(Temple) gathering” (道館雅集); and almost all of these people were friends of the artist

Huang Gongwang. As most Daoist temples are located in mountains, the artist and/or the recipient may have simply taken the entire Fuchun landscape to be their “garden,” or their estate and property, where their friends could come for their informal gathering, just

51 like their visit of those at their more wealthy friends, the best-known of which is the gathering of more than 40 people at Gu Ying’s “Jade Mountain” retreat in 1348

(玉山雅集).

Therefore Daoist participation in or the significance of Daoist culture for the late

Yuan literati gathering could be more profitably understood from the economic perspective, for it was suggested that “Gu (Ying), like Ni Zan, protected his wealth through association with the Taoist Church” (Sensabaugh, 98), because “Taoist temples often enjoyed special tax exemptions and were able to preserve and add to their wealth while laymen suffered under the burdensome tax structure” in late Yuan (Brown, 104).

This privilege may thus function to help view, in economic or even ideological terms, the

Fuchun mountains as, figuratively perhaps, the free (i.e., or because, tax-free) “property” or “estate” of either the recipient or the artist for no other purpose than their “Daoist

(temple) gathering”.

As a matter of fact, Wang Meng, the artist’s young friend and the youngest of the

“Four Great Masters of Yuan Dynasty,” does have a painting done in 1368 presumably about the kind of literary gathering he saw at the Jade Mountain to which he was a sometime visitor. Its title is “Pure Gathering at Forest Fountain” (Fig 33), and it is in hanging scroll format, apparently in accordance with Wang Meng’s other works featuring such landscape of property. If the vertical format, according to David Sensabaugh, represents “a specific Yuan solution to the representation of such gatherings, a solution in

52 hanging scroll format in which landscape has become prominent” (96), then Huang

Gongwang’s solution is also, or even more, specifically Yuan while still in keeping with the horizontal tradition of representing gathering scenes: not only landscape becomes even more prominent as a result of the disappearance of the actual gathering scene which is still present at the foot of the Wang Meng scroll, the rich Daoist element is further integrated or incorporated to highlight the influence of Daoist culture in Yuan society and thus to indicate the close connection between Daoism and literati activities in late

Yuan—both economically and culturally. In this sense, the Fuchun scroll helps to call attention to the change that this kind of gathering had undergone in late Yuan: with the presence of less and less renown or elite scholar officials but more people of humble origin or status, or common people of culture like Daoist artists and local literati, the literati gathering proper appears to have replaced the previous more socially “elegant” ones at the Orchid Pavilion or the West Garden. In other words, the kind of gathering in late Yuan Jiannan area is actually closer in character to the “Daoist (temple) gathering”

(道館雅集) than to those “elegant gathering” proper in the past, by virtue of not only the actual presence and active participation of Daoist literati but also the protective role of

Daoism for the property or wealth of many hosts that had made possible such gatherings

(see also Hay, 11)—it is therefore quite reasonable and justified to extend the use of

“Daoist (temple) gathering” 道館雅集to refer to the late Yuan literati gathering in general.

53

In the horizontal Fuchun Mountains, the actual gathering scene is not totally absent however, but rendered more into an implicit theme or more subtly integrated into the surrounding landscape rather than still openly featured as in both the title and the pictorial representation of Wang Meng’s hanging scroll. More specifically, the presentation of the actual gathering scene or activity appears to have been replaced by the indication of the very PROCESS of the whole gathering event, including, or featuring prominently instead, the pleasant journey to, or presumably later also away from, the actual gathering scene, pleasant precisely because of the beautiful landscape in the

Fuchun mountains where the gathering event supposedly takes place. In form, this is also very likely an elaboration of Ma Yuan’s representation of the West Garden gathering at the beginning part of the scroll where some scholars and their servants are described as arriving either on water or on road, and one scholar is depicted as being on his way of crossing a bridge (Fig. 34-1 & Fig. 34-2).

More significantly, such an emphasis on the journey toward the gathering scene or the process of the whole event finds a perfect echo in the anecdote about Wang

Huizhi’s visit of Dai Kui at a night of beautiful snow which got him in the mood so he

“went on the strength of an impulse.” For the Eastern Jin literates and the son of our sage calligrapher Wang Xizhi, what matters or fascinates him is precisely the very process of his visit, so to speak, or the aesthetic journey on that particular snowy night, rather than the eventual meeting of his friend in person: “I originally went on the strength of an impulse, and when the impulse was spent I turned back. Why was it necessary to see 54

Dai?” (qtd. in Augustin, 71). Hence the alignment of the tail of his boat with the walls of his friend’s house which appear to have “repelled” it away (ibid.), while the head of the boat carries the direction of diagonal slanting formed by the flat outcrop of the group of mountains or rocks behind the houses, which presumably had previously attracted and guided this boat here with its snow-scape; the boat’s head is also aligned vertically with the other group of mountain peaks on the far left so as to call attention to the powerfully constructed body of the standing rocks right above its head, which has a counterpart similarly and more prominently built up in the other snow work (the “Nine Peaks” scroll). In this light, this snow work of the artist in 1349 could function nicely as a preparation for, or a further test of, conceptually this time, his stress on the process aspect of the implicit gathering theme in his horizontal Fu-chun scroll, with the twin stories about the calligrapher father (watching geese) and his son (visiting Dai) wonderfully supporting each other from respectively the stylistic or formal (i.e., format) and the conceptual sides in order to better express the Six Dynasties ideals in personality and art.

Huang’s attraction to this ideal has been further confirmed by Huang’s poet friend and the intended recipient of his “Great Peaks of Fuchun,” Shao Hengzhen, who associated the artist’s paintings specifically to the Six Dynasties ideal—he referred to it as the more specific “Eastern Jin” period—in the two of his poems on respectively

Huang’s “Snow Clearing over Nine Peaks” and one certain fan painting by the artist

55

(“题黄一峯画扇”). In Shao’s poem on the snow work,10 the poet’s reference to the

“relics (or remnants) of the Jin dynasty people” is related more to a Daoist world of

“immortals” (“老仙”), “exotic island in the sea” (“扶桑”), and crane (“驾鹤”), which is the favorite Daoist animal symbolizing longevity. But in his poem on one of Huang’s fan paintings,11 the poet refers to the Six Dynasties ideal (in art and personal charm) as the more specific “Eastern Jin tradition” (or more literally, the “Eastern Jin clothes and hats”)” (“东晋衣冠”), in other words, the carefree and unrestrained style of natural grace that people find so charming in their talks and behaviors of the period in which

Wang Xizhi and his sons lived. While the Daoist world is what John Hay considered more relevant to his discussion about Fuchun scroll’s dynamic world of Daoist reclusion and transformation, thus more important to Hunag Gongwang the Daoist and diviner, I find the Six Dynasties ideal appealing more to Huang Gongwang the artist and intellectual—previously trained as a Confucian scholar, Huang is versed in various schools of thoughts, as were typical of Chinese intellectuals of that TWO periods when

Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism coexisted and had to compete for their influence, obviously due to the slackening in control of Confucian thoughts in the time of social turmoil (particularly the endless “War of the Eight Princes” or “八王之亂”which had significantly decimated Chinese population in the 4th century) and alien (Mongol) rule in the 14th century, and is said to expertise in philosophical debates—for it was more an

10 The first poem by Shao Hengzhen is titled 一峯道人画九山雪霁:“大雪漫空暗九山, 晋人遗迹杳难攀. 老仙只在扶桑外, 借淂瑶京鹤驾还.” 11 The second poem by Shao Hengzhen is titled 题黄一峯画扇:“南州丘壑无今古, 东晋衣冠久陆沉. 便欲相从二三子, 满船载酒剧论心 .” 56 aesthetic and philosophical ideal that was represented by Wang Xizhi’s calligraphic art and his son’s personality grace or carefree personal charm.

To come back, the artist’s wandering away in 1349 from his job on hand (i.e., the

Fuchun project in progress) to produce those three snow works, is probably also the result of his being struck by the mood both to try a different subject and to test an unusual and quite modern way of space configuration—again possibly inspired by his encounter with the Qian Xuan painting, though set in mood by nature itself, or by the rare snow that year. And the artist described his mood in a fascinating way in his inscription on the

“Snow Clearing over Nine Peaks”: the marvelous snows that spring coincided

“miraculously” (“真奇事也”) with the very process of the artist’s production of that snow work—“it had snowed two or three times that spring and it didn’t stop snowing until I finish my snow painting.”12 Even the very title of that painting seems to have also

“registered” the miraculous character of such rare occasions of exceeding natural beauty and the beauty of artistic creation—or a rare meeting & gathering of these two—by calling attention to both the number (“Nine” is a felicitous number both in life and in the

Book of Change) and the finished state of that natural wonder (“snow clearing”). Such a co-operation or “gathering” between nature and artistic creation must have been something significant, or a mysterious marvel, in the eyes of a professional Daoist and an one-time diviner. Here again both the idea of process (and the related notion of

12 The original inscription reads: “至正九年春正月，為彥功作雪山次，春雪大作，凡兩三次，直至畢工方止，亦奇事也。大癡道人 ，時年八十有一，書此以記歲月雲。” (Emphases mine). 57 completion in the word “clearing”) and the motivating element of aesthetic and creative mood was considered indispensible for the creative works of both human being and nature.

And research did show that the particular series of snows in 1349 in the Jiangnan area (or the South-eastern part of China) is also an extremely rare occurrence in history: it had never been seen for over one hundred years prior to that!

3). Continuity and Spatiality—Repetition, Transformation and Completion

The stress on the mood in the artist’s inscription on the “Snow Clearing over Nine

Peaks”, or on the process (“歲月”) where special visit of the inspiring mood have been registered particularly (“to commemorate the time/occasion,” or “以記歲月”)—we are reminded of the Fuchun project which had been initiated precisely when the mood struck him one day in 1347, that is, “in an extreme of exhilaration” or “兴之所致”, as Huang’s inscription clearly states at the end of the scroll (Hay, 13), while its slow progress was equally the result of such inspiring mood incapable of being constantly available— naturally involves the issue of continuity integral to the horizontal format of structuring the Fuchun scroll. In contrast to the emphasis on progression in the Xia Gui scroll, the

Fuchun Mountains is more about process, or about continuity as process, and as a process of repetition, transformation and completion. Additionally, the notion of “landscape of property” could also help explain why the artist has been free to work on this project for 58 such a long time: it simultaneously functions as a kind of topography landscape for both the artist and the recipient which is his Daoist colleague Wu-yong. A sense of belonging endears the sense of continuity by simply adding the sense of intimacy.

Moreover, the unprecedented length of time (3-7 years) associated with the production of his grand Fuchun project constitutes another aspect of the continuity factor integral to its being a horizontal project. The on and off process of its gradual production as well as the artist’s inscription in advance at the urge of its intended recipient brings up the very issue of its completion, both the time and the state of its completion, which is interestingly called into question by the different or variant ending of the Ziming version of this painting, or simply its lack of ending compared with the “Wu-yong” version, which however does not have a proper head or actually has its head missing. While the inscription has clearly indicated the time of its beginning, it is strangely very ambiguous about the time of its completion: “… (Wuyong) has made me inscribe it in advance [i.e., before finishing it] at the end of the scroll, in order to let everyone know the difficulty I had in completing it” (“俾先識卷末，庶使知其成就之難也”) (Cahill, 1975:111).

James Cahill’s translation, which is basically faithful, may lead to potential confusion when he translated the original quite vague expression of “成就” into the more explicit

“completing” as the last two words of this passage, for “成就” may simply mean

“accomplish,” which will also make perfect sense here. As “the the difficulty I had in completing it” is after all consistent with the necessity of having it inscribed “in

59 advance,” which Cahill correctly glossed it as “before finishing it,” we are therefore sure of only one thing, which is its incompleteness at the time of its inscription.13But this is only about the temporal incompletion concerning only its time of production, which is interestingly not what had originally worried its intended recipient Wuyong at all. As nothing is known about the ultimate moment when the artist completely stopped working on it, this question remains open-ended, and there is always the possibility of its having been finished anytime before his death, which makes it both justified and temping to set its more probable time of actual completion at 1353, judging from his infatuation with the

Wang Xizhi motif.

As far as the spatial or pictorial completion of this scroll is concerned, however, it becomes an utterly impossible job to decide, even by the artist himself, judging from his own description of his working process in the inscription. But the artist would definitely be certain about its physical completeness, namely, its head and end, which however becomes a mystery to the viewers today as the result of its intriguing and eventful history of transmission. The most likely candidate for (part of) its head, the “Cut-off Mountain

Picture” in Zhejiang Province Museum, has been generally accepted to be the original head of this scroll, as could be confirmed by a later forgery copy of the Fuchun scroll, or the Ziming version, which is identical in composition with the authentic Wuyong version in almost every part with the exception of its head—its end is shorter than that of the

Wuyong version, therefore also consistent. So it becomes an interesting case to have a

13 John Alan Hay translated this part similarly as “… how hard it is to bring it to completion” (14). 60 painting that is temporally open-ended but physically “open-headed”, so to speak. But it is incomplete in both senses, and, or rather because, its continuity also works both ways—both physical and temporal.

As this is again typical of the unique long horizontal format of Chinese painting, we may say that it remained incomplete both temporally and spatially at the time of the artist’s inscribing it precisely because he is interested more in the notion of process (of production) than in that of the completed product ready to be signed away—he was by no means ready to complete it by the time of his inscription, judging from the suggestion of his being both irritated and amused by Wuyong’s unwarranted worries. In the same way, he would very likely be more interested in portraying the very process of his gathering event than the eventual happening itself—actually as the verbal form of the “gathering” indicates, even the expression of the actual event takes the form of stressing the gradual arriving rather than the final arrival of each and every participant. In this sense, as both the temporal and spatial embodiment of the continuous arriving or gathering process, the very journey among the beautiful Fuchun mountains become a pleasant and most memorable experience of the continuity aspect of the whole event.

Other elements that contribute to this sense of continuity include repetition and transformation. As John Hay convincingly demonstrates in his dissertation, the artist makes great effort to arrange for the repetition of tree groups, bridges, pavilions and human figures etc. throughout the scroll. And this is done more on the stylistic and

61 textual levels. Continuity is further conveyed in the form of alternation between textured and blank parts, and between what has been executed in dry brush (mountains and rocks) and those done in wet ink (trees). Transformation, however, represents the Daoist understanding of repetition as a more dynamic process, or repetition animated by the difference. This is more powerfully expressed in the artist’s masterful treatment of the series of mountain masses in especially the central part, and also in his advice on the configuration of space:

The heads of the mountains must [behave according to the principles of discontinuity and continuity, of turning, form one into another, and of one beginning where the other ceases. The mountain arteries all run according to these [principles]. This is the living art, huofa. The assembling peaks all pay proper respect to each other. The myriad trees all follow accordingly. As in any army led by a great general, all in unison look incapable of transgressing their individual function. This describes the form of true mountains. (Qtd. in Hay, 162).14

More specifically, continuity functions as a primarily spatial process of transformation and repetition in “Great Peak of Fuchun” as well as some of his other vertical compositions such as “Snow Clearing over Nine Peaks” and “Heavenly Pond and Stone Cliffs”, but as a primarily temporal process in the two short hand scrolls

(Mountains and Streams BEFORE Rain and Clearing AFTER Sudden Snow) in which either snow or water / river (assimilated to the blank surface or the “blankness,” or

“借地为雪”) provides the (narrative) continuity and (pictorial) unity—a physically

14 The original passage reads: ”山头要折搭转换，山脉皆顺，此活法也。众峰相揖逊，万树相从，如大军领卒，森然有不可逊之 色，此写真山形也”. (from Huang Gongwang’s 《山水诀》) 62 extended temporal unfolding of the moment. In the long horizontal Fuchun scroll, however, continuity manifests as an effort of combining both the spatial (mountains) and the temporal (dwelling), and ultimately as a process of artistic creation (or an intimacy with the artist’s hand) that sufficiently activates blankness through its spatial textures, or the materiality of the marks, which transforms the materiality of blank paper into a surface for expressing spatiality.

4). Intimacy, Temporality and Materiality—Geometry and Intimacy of Materials:

The artist has clearly been interested in paper as a consistent medium for both horizontal compositions and mountain dwelling themes, or even the medium for the

Fuchun Mountains in particular, all three understandably demonstrating a deeper involvement of intimacy. It thus seems that the intimacy facilitated by format, themes, subjects, or even forms (of the house imagery), eventually comes to depend on the intimacy of materials—the materials of paper, brush and ink which are a constant part of the literati life.

Such a continuity across medium, themes and subjects will further extends to forms and textures, and the materiality of their textual marks eventually joins with the materiality of paper to provide the basis for the all-integrating continuity. This may explain the artist’s fascination with the snow subjects and the geometric forms of his houses. As his snow scenes evolve from the complexity of vertical composition into the simplicity of horizontal ones, his house image also develops from being “closely 63 integrated into the landscape” (Hay, 223) that we see in the two “Peaks” paintings (Great

Peak of Fuchun and Snow Clearing over Nine Peaks) into possessing an outstanding openness and geometric grandeur in the Mountain Dwelling and Clearing after Sudden

Snow, which appear to have exerted its dominance over half of the composition and transforming the landscape into a mindscape for the absent recluse in these two paintings.

The potentially abstract geometric form thus acquires a dimension of human spirit and human warmth, hence the sense of intimacy we experience when viewing these scenes and when looking at those house images in particular, which often take the forms of coziness or spaciousness.15 Huang also has these two types of houses in his horizontal

Fuchun scroll at respectively the valley scene at the foot of the first imposing mountain mass in the extant Wuyong version and the other smaller valley not far from the central pavilion with the fisherman/angler around. While the smaller houses nestling in the mountain’s bosom makes people nostalgic about the sense of cozy dwelling in our daily life, the more spacious mansion at presumably the gathering scene (where the Wang

Xizhi figure has been waiting for everybody) afford enough room and freedom for the meeting of congenial minds or spirits on gathering occasions.

In the same way of the geometric forms humanizing and even “mesmeriz(ing)”

(Hay, 217) the still spacious blank background, the equally abstract forms or shapes of rocks and mountains in the snow scenes also help to activate and transform the snowy blankness with the sufficiently sparse marks of texture working with its predominantly

15 This reminds me of Bachelard’s discussion of the mesmeric power or oneiric aspect of the house or those specific parts of the house to its inhabitants. 64 blank surface. This could also be what the artist has been doing in the sparsely textured level plateau passage immediately following the most richly textured pine group and that majestic pavilion in Fuchun Mountains. The strokes outlining the long extending level plateau are dry, pale and loose, the contours and shapes of the flat outcrop are abstract and somewhat geometric, and the textual marks are sparse and scattered on the blank surface of paper denoting slopes, space and water. Yet they still possess enough materiality or are sufficiently materialized to evoke and activate, if not yet able to animate, the spatial relations in that specific passage, and this is done precisely by working with the materiality of paper’s blank surface as the artist had done with the blank surface of his snow works.

With continuity and uniformity in the horizontal work replacing the complex spatiality of many vertical compositions of the artist, the materiality of textual marks begins to affect the issues of temporality and speed in a unique way. Unlike the artist’s constant reworking on various parts of the same Fuchun scroll and the prolonged process of its completion, a heightened consciousness of the materiality of textual marks, particularly following that passage of textual explosion—in a sense also a textual

“gathering”—begins to affect the artist’s understanding of its function and consequently affect his speed of executing especially, or presumably, the last few parts of the Funchun

Mountains, namely, the level plateau, the middle ground shoal and the uprising single peak at the end. The broad and long level strokes dragged across the surface, first with dry brush, then in pale ink, conveys a strong sense of speed in executing these two parts.

65

After a brief moment of working on the column of trees in the middle ground with short level patches of ink, the artist begins to use long and almost vertical strokes to run up and down the steep mountain sides, rarely stopping to pick up a rock or tree. The fast slanting or quasi-vertical strokes were even employed to give shape to a low mound at the foot of this peak, which normally should be done with smooth quasi-level strokes

(Fig. 35). More dramatically, dark dots of thick ink are swiftly splashed to the sparsely textured vertical slope as suggestions of lush vegetation, obviously a further abstraction of small vertical stalks of trees dotted the slopes of the central mountain beside the majestic pavilion. This is more a demonstration of the artist rushing frantically towards the end of the scroll.

Here the materiality of the ink marks and brush strokes is particularly effective in helping express the sense of speed and temporality. As it affords a really intimate view of the artist’s working process in the last minute, viewers in a sense feel more strongly an intimacy with the artist’s hand. The promptly invented texture marks also enriches the stylistic space of this work, though in a markedly different way from the artist’s overall slow pace in accomplishing the whole project.

But when did the artist find the need to rush toward its ultimate completion after having been working on it in the past 3 or 6 years? Is it around the time of Huang

Gongwang inscribing this scroll for Wuyong? Or is it the last day of the year 1353? One could only hope relevant information about this could be unearthed someday in the near future.

66

5). Wang Huizhi, Shen Zhou and the Transmission of Two Masterpieces

Huang Gongwang’s interest in the calligrapher’s son Wang Huizhi may also have some prophetic bearing, like his inscription to Wu-yong, on the afterlife of his own

Fuchun scroll. As one who practices calligraphy and befriends contemporary calligraphers such as Zhang Yu, the artist may also be fascinated by Wang Huizhi’s role in the transmission of his father’s Orchid Pavilion manuscript.

As the 5th son of the sage calligrapher, Wang Huizhi was chosen by his father as the one to pass on this manuscript, because he had two sons while his younger brother

Wang Xianzhi, whose achievement in calligraphic art is second only to his father but who unfortunately had only two daughters. However, when the manuscript reached the seventh generation in the Wang Xizhi family, the heir grandson decided to become a monk, and later a well-known calligrapher like his ancestors. As he had no offspring to inherit this manuscript, one of his disciples had the good fortune to come in possession of this treasure which he carefully hid at a safe place.

But the Emperor Taizong of Tang Dynasty happened to be a passionate collector of Wang Xizhi’s calligraphic works. So one of his officials Xiao Yi visited the monk owner and managed to swindle the manuscript away from him and took it to the Emperor, who was said to have later taken it to his tomb.

67 It would be interesting to connect Xiao Yi’s method of cheating the manuscript out of the possession of the monk with the Fuchun scroll’s intended recipient Wuyong’s worry about its immediate ownership as was recorded in the artist’s inscription: “Wuyong is overanxious that someone else will get it away from me by craft or force …” (Cahill,

1976: 111), which is precisely what Xiao Yi, who was a high-rank official in the guise of a scholar interested in Wang Xizhi’s calligraphy, did to the monk before he walked away with the Orchid Pavilion manuscript. And Wuyong and the monk guardian are both in the religious order.

The Fuchun Mountains has indeed also had the same fate of being swindled away, though not from Wuyong, but from the second known owner of this great painting, however short-lived his good fortune might be. It is none other than the famous literati painter Shen Zhou, who is the head of the “Four Great Masters of Ming dynasty.” He was excited by the good fortune of coming into possession of this scroll, so he took it to a friend and asked him to write a colophon. But his friend’s son managed to hide it away and told Shen Zhou that it was lost. Later Shen Zhou lost it a second time when one day he was thrilled to find it was out on sale. But it was gone by the time he came back with money. So he ended up having only written a long colophon at the end of the scroll detailing and commenting on his experience as well as the Yuan master’s achievement when he saw it again at the place of one of his friends, and also made a copy of this scroll from his memory.

68 Even though Huang Gongwang could not foresee everything that had happened to his magnum opus, he had the insight to see what typically happens to most great artworks: people would try their best to get it away from their rightful owners “by craft or force”. Like what had happened to the Xia Gui scroll, human greediness will jeopardize the artwork’s life, but it at the same time helped produce meaningful narratives to help with its transmission in non-material form. Huang’s knowledge of what happened to the transmission of the Orchid Pavilion manuscript may have made him think more about the afterlife of his own masterpiece on which he had been working for so long, and to which he must have developed a strong attachment. If he had been inspired by the supreme achievement of the calligrapher father, in due time—probably in 1349, the year after he saw the Qian Xuan painting and got inspired by the father motif—he would naturally think of the son, espetially with the miraculous snow that spring getting the artist in the mood, then think of the son’s mission of making possible the smooth transmission of the summit achievement of his father calligraphic art, and of making possible the continuity of great art and the inspiring cultural ideal it represents. Huang Gongwang thus appears to have come to the understanding that exactly 1000 years later, it fell on his shoulder to help transmitting that endlessly charming Six Dynasties cultural ideal in a different art form through precisely his magnum opus, that endlessly and continuously extending and expanding Fuchun Mountains in the very form of the long horizontal scroll, This is a typical Daoist way of visualizing life, spiritual life and cultural life in particular. This kind of transmission will further become a kind of gathering, an elegant gathering of two

69 inspired and inspiring Daoist minds, or a gathering between the sage calligrapher and the sage literati painter across exactly 1000 years in time.

70

Coda: The Blurry and the Fuzzy

In Xia Gui’s scroll, the atmospheric perspective has been the key factor in the production of poetic space of the Southern Song as well as the destruction of form in a blurry wash-facilitated distance, with the dramatic juxtaposition of near and far, void and solid instituting a forward moving progression to activate the somewhat static diagonal

Southern Song space. But this further introduces a blurry factor into the temporal world, and significantly complicates the relation between beginning and ending, origin and nostalgia, as well as the urban and rural worlds. In either case, the unifying function of the blurry space contributes much to the senses of continuity and intimacy associated with the horizontal format.

In Huang Gongwang’s Fuchun scroll, however, the new reality of spatiality in dialogue with the blank surface of paper makes it necessary to address the materiality of textures and medium. With blankness (i.e., devoid of marks) replacing the void (i.e., devoid of mass), the fuzzy also substitutes the blurry to suggest more a mode of incompleteness or “incomplete resolution” (Shiff, 12) of which has been a familiar experience to viewers when going through the varyingly textured passages in this scroll.

Unlike the blurry, the fuzzy results from more a “disjunctive distribution of material elements (the constituent marks of representation—particles of pigment in painting etc.”

71 or textual marks, and its incomplete state is inseparable from its being part of the process.16

These two modes further correspond to the different conceptualization of the void either as metaphysical “emptiness” in Buddhist theory or as the potentially transformative

“blankness” in Daoist thought. While the blurring of boundaries between emptiness and substance is essential to the attainment of Buddhist enlightenment, the transformation of blankness into competition and completion into blankness becomes a constant process, with the fuzzy as the midway or perhaps transitional state of incompletion. And the notions of both process and the fuzzy are important in Daoist thought. This naturally shed light on the appeal of Xia Gui’s works to those Zen artists in the 13th century, while

Huang Gongwang is a practicing Daoist in the 14th century reciprocating with another

Daoist cultural ideal in art and life 1000 years ago in the 4th century, namely, the Six

Dynasties ideal represented by Wang Xizhi the father and great calligrapher as well as

Wang Huizhi the son who has been responsible for transmitting, interpreting (through his own calligraphic art as well as his life style recorded in that anecdote in 世说新语 Shi

Shuo Xin Yu ) thus continuing his father’s artistic ideal through at least helping building it into a different and linguistic way of transmitting that Six Dynasties cultural ideal— through the intriguing story of Xiao Yi’s obtaining the Orchid Pavilion manuscripts “by guile and by force”.

16 These two quoted expressions are from Professor Richard Shiff’s essay “BLUR AND FUZZ: On Translating Representations of Low Resolution”, pages 11-12. 72 And this kind of cultural ideal has been both reinvented though Huang

Gongwang’s own work, and achieved through the artist’s typically Daoist and Six

Dynasties style of producing his art, through his transforming his art into a continuous process of creation and repetition, and through his accomplishing or completing his art by following its natural course, by being attentive to the Wang Huizhi-like visiting of his creative or aesthetic mood occasioned by miraculous natural wonders like snow and rain.

As a result, he finds it necessary and natural to freely adjust his speed and style so as to pay due respect to the materiality of circumstances involved in his artistic creation.

73

Bibliography:

Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Translated from the French by Maria Jolas. foreword by Étienne Gilson. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969,

Birgitta Augustin. “Modern Views on Old Histories: Zhang Yu’s and Huang Gongwang’s Encounter with Qian Xuan,” In Arts asiatiques, tome 67, 2012. pp. 63-76.

Bol, Peter K. “This Culture of Ours:” Intellectual Transition in the Tang and Song China. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1992. Brown, Claudia. Some Aspects of Late Yüan Patronage in Suchou.” In Artists and Patrons: Some Social and Economic Aspects of Chinese Paintings, edited by Chu- tsing Li, James Cahill, and Wai-kam Ho, 101-110. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989.

Cahill, James. Hills beyond a River: Chinese Painting of the Yüan Dynasty, 1279-1368. New York: Weatherhill, 1976. ----. Three Alternative Histories of Chinese Painting. Spencer Museum of Art, the University of Kansas, 1988. ----. “The Southern Song Hangzhou,” in The Lyric Journey: Poetic Paintings in China and Japan. Harvard UP, 1996. Chen, Yingque (陈寅恪).“崔浩与寇谦之”, in 《金明馆丛稿初编》, 三联书店, 2001. Chen, Yun-ru (陳韻如). “A Preliminary Study of Huang Gongwang’s Contacts in Art and His Style of Snowy Landscape Painting.” 黃公望的書畫交遊活動與其雪圖 風格初探,” 《中正大學中文學術年刊》,2010.. Pp 193-219.

Clunas, Craig. Art in China. Oxford & New York: OUP, 1997. ----. Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming dynasty China. London: Reaktion Books, 1996. ----. Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004. Edwards, Richard. “Hsia Kuei and the Late Sung” in his The World Around Chinese Artists. Ann Arbor: the University of Michigan Press, 1989. Fong, Wen. Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, 8th-14th Century. NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale UP, 1992.

74 Hay, John Alan. Huang Kung-wang's Dwelling in the Fu-ch'un Mountains: the Dimensions of a Landscape. Dissertation, Princeton University, 1978. He, Chuanxin (何传馨). Ed. 《文藝紹興: 南宋藝術與文化》 (Dynastic Renaissance: Art and Culture of the Southern Song). Vol. 2: Paintings and Calligraphy. Taibei: National Palace Museum, 2010. Lee, Hui-shu. “Art and Imperial Image at the Late Southern Song Court,” in Arts of the Song and Yuan. NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996. 249-69. ----. Empresses, Art and Agency in Song Dynasty China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010. ----. “壶中天地: 西湖与南宋都城临安的艺术与文化.” In 《文藝紹興: 南宋藝術與文 化》, 2010. Pp 32-65. Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. Li, Chu-tsing (ed.). Artists and Patrons: Some Social and Economic Aspects of Chinese Painting. Kress Foundation Dept. of Art History, the University of Kansas, in Association with the University of Washington Press, 1989. Luo, Hongcai (罗宏才). “夏圭《溪山无尽图》& 李公麟《五百罗汉图》递传经过及相关问题研究”, in《上海大学学报 (社会科学版) 》, Journal of Shanghai University (Social Sciences Edition), 2010 年03期 (03 / 2010), Volume 17. Pp. 88-107. Pen Huiping (彭慧萍). “南宋画院之省舍职制与画史想象,” in 《故宫学刊》, 总第2期, 2005. Pp 62-86.

----. “走出宫墙: 由 ‘画家十三科’ 谈南宋宫廷画师之民间性,” in 《艺术史研究》, 第7期 (2005). Pp 179-216. Sensabaugh, David Ake. “Guests at Jade Mountain: Aspects of Patronage in Fourteenth Century K'un-shan.” In Artists and Patrons: Some Social and Economic Aspects of Chinese Paintings, edited by Chu-tsing Li, James Cahill, and Wai-kam Ho, 93-99. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989.

Shiff, Richard. “BLUR AND FUZZ: On Translating Representations of Low Resolution.” Distributed in our “Poststructuralist Methods in Art History” class, Fall 2015.

Vanderstappen, Harrie A. The Landscape Paintings of China: Musings of a Journeyman. Edited by Roger E. Covey. Gainsville: the University of Florida Press, 2014. Vinograd, Richard. “Family Properties: Personal Context and Cultural Pattern in Wang Meng’s Pien Mountains of 1366.” Ars Orientalis 13 (1982): 1-29.

75 Wu, Changpeng (吳長鵬). 黄公望繪画觀硏究 (A Study of Huang Gongwang’s Painting Theory).104 pages. Taibei: 藝術家出版社 (The Artist Press), 1980.

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Zhan, Xiqing (etal.) 黄公望与《富春山居图》研究 (Huang Gongwang and his “Fu- chun Mountains”). 张希清, 赵一新, 徐文光主编. 文物出版社. Beijing: Wen wu chu ban she, 2011. 282 pages.

Zhan, Xiqing (etal.) 黄公望与《富春山居图》研究 (Huang Gongwang and his “Fu- chun Mountains”). 张希清, 赵一新, 徐文光主编. 文物出版社. Beijing: Wen wu chu ban she, 2011. 282 pages. Zhang, Mianxi (张眠溪). “夏圭 《溪山清远图》考析,” in 《中国书画》, 2014年 第3 期（总第135期). Pp 48-50.

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76 Images

Fig. 1. A Pure and Remote View of Streams and Mountains, 1st section

77 Fig. 1-2. A Pure and Remote View, 1st section (Detail of beginning)

Fig. 2. A Pure and Remote View, the Cliff section

78

Fig. 3. A Pure and Remote View, 2nd section (the Mountain Peak group)

Fig. 4. A Pure and Remote View, last section (the ending)

79

Fig. 5. A Pure and Remote View, the central section

Fig. 6. A Pure and Remote View, 1st section (the temple scene)

80

Fig. 7. A Pure and Remote View, the Left of the central section (the inns)

Fig. 8. A Pure and Remote View, 1st section (the lake scene)

81

Fig. 9. Xia Gui, Distant Mountains and Autumn Wood ()

82

Fig. 10. Xia Gui, Mountain Market

83

84

85

86 Fig. 12-2. Dai Jin (Detail)

Fig. 13. Xia Gui, “Gazing at the Waterfall”

87 Fig. 14. Xia Gui, Sailboat in Rainstorm 88 Fig. 15. Xia Gui, Rapids in a Mountain Valley,

89 90 Fig. 16. Xia Gui, 12 Views of Landscape, 《山水十二景图 · 烟堤晚泊》

Fig. 17. Xia Gui, 12 Views of Landscape,《山水十二景图 · 烟村归渡》

91 Fig 18 . Xia Gui, 12 Views of Landscape, 夏圭 《山水十二景图 · 渔笛清幽》

Fig. 19. Xia Gui 夏圭 《遥岑烟霭图》

92

Fig. 20. Xia Gui, Landscape, in Tokyo

93 Fig. 21. Xia Gui, Landscape (Tokyo)

Fig. 22. Xia Gui, Landscape-3 (Authenticated by Wang Duo)

94 95

96

Fig. 23. Huang Gongwang, Mountain Dwelling, 1349 (above), Nanjing Museum

Fig. 24. Huang Gongwang, Great Peak of Fuchun, Undated (below), Nanjing Museum

97 98

Fig. 25. Huang Gongwang,《溪山雨意图》 (prior to 1344)

99

Fig. 26. Huang Gongwang, Snow Clearing over Nine Peaks (《九峰雪霁图》, 1349, Palace Museum Beijing, 北京故宫博物院)

Fig. 27. Huang Gongwang, “Clearing after Sudden Snow” (《快雪时晴图》, at National Museum of China)

100

101

102 Fig 28. Huang Gongwang, Visiting Dai on the Shan Creek (《剡溪访戴图》, 1349, 云南省博物馆)

Fig. 29. Wang Xizhi, The Orchid Pavilion manuscript (353 AD).

103

Fig. 30-2. Qian Xuan’s 钱选, Wang Xizhi Watching the Geese (Detail)

Fig. 30-1. Qian Xuan’s 钱选, Wang Xizhi Watching the Geese

104

Fig. 31. Qian Xuan’s 钱选, Dwelling in the Floating Jade Mountains

Fig. 32 Qian Xuan’s 钱选, Mountain Dwelling

105 106 Fig. 33. Wang Meng王蒙, Pure Gathering at Forest Fountain, or 《林泉清集图》

Fig. 34-1. Ma Yuan马远, Gathering at West Garden, 《西园雅集图》(Detail 1)

107 Fig. 34-2. Ma Yuan马远, Gathering at West Garden,《西园雅集图》(Detail 2)

Fig. 35. Huang Gongwang, Fuchun Mountains (Detail of the central part) -- the “Wang Xizhi watching Geese” passage

108

Fig. 36. Huang Gongwang, “The Cut-off Mountain picture” or the missing head (Zhejiang Museum)

109

Fig. 37. Huang Gongwang, Fuchun Mountains (Detail of the last section) -- “The Lone Peak”

110