Day 80 - Looking at a landscape scroll - a lesson
August 9, 2018
Today's gallery (214) provides an object lesson in what it means to look carefully at a Chinese scroll. The theme of this small gallery is "The Landscape of the Garden." Its contents could for the most part be fitted into galleries with other themes, I think. What seems particular about the depictions of gardens is that they involve walled spaces that provide retreats from the commotion of the outside world. Otherwise, I see many of the motifs that I've come to recognize in other landscape paintings: fantastical rocks, waterfalls, bodies of water, stands of willow and bamboo, paths, arched bridges, pergolas, and small figures of humans.
All these elements are found in today's work, a landscape scroll on paper perhaps 24 feet long. I don't look at the caption before I start to examine the scroll. From right to left, I walk down most of its length, recognizing the different landscape features but noting the absence of human beings. I finally get to a point, perhaps 20 feet along the scroll, where I see a group of scholars and gentlemen, some in apparent conversation, at least one looking out at the surrounding water. Here, the color scheme transitions from black and white to pastel tints. Satisfied, I go back to read the caption.
And that's when shock sets in. The landscape, entitled "The Virtuous Being," was painted in 2015 by Hao Liang, who was born in 1981. The caption talks about other versions of gardens incorporated into the painting, from the most famous garden painting of all, painted by Wang Wei in the eighth century, to a Ming dynasty garden. And then the caption says that the scroll takes us into the present day, where Wang's old garden has been refurbished to include a big Ferris wheel that has broken and is spewing its gondolas into the air. And I realize I have stopped short of and missed this part of the scroll. Which means that I have missed what seems to me to be (albeit in oversimplified terms) the main point of the picture - the way the ugliness of the modern world has overtaken tradition. (In fact, at the end of the scroll, several men dressed in modern clothes- one seems to be wearing shades - gaze out over this absurd and hallucinatory scene.)
I think back to what I read at the beginning of the exhibition - that the landscape scroll is a journey through time as well as space. And today's experience is a powerful reminder of what is lost by hurrying that journey.
All these elements are found in today's work, a landscape scroll on paper perhaps 24 feet long. I don't look at the caption before I start to examine the scroll. From right to left, I walk down most of its length, recognizing the different landscape features but noting the absence of human beings. I finally get to a point, perhaps 20 feet along the scroll, where I see a group of scholars and gentlemen, some in apparent conversation, at least one looking out at the surrounding water. Here, the color scheme transitions from black and white to pastel tints. Satisfied, I go back to read the caption.
And that's when shock sets in. The landscape, entitled "The Virtuous Being," was painted in 2015 by Hao Liang, who was born in 1981. The caption talks about other versions of gardens incorporated into the painting, from the most famous garden painting of all, painted by Wang Wei in the eighth century, to a Ming dynasty garden. And then the caption says that the scroll takes us into the present day, where Wang's old garden has been refurbished to include a big Ferris wheel that has broken and is spewing its gondolas into the air. And I realize I have stopped short of and missed this part of the scroll. Which means that I have missed what seems to me to be (albeit in oversimplified terms) the main point of the picture - the way the ugliness of the modern world has overtaken tradition. (In fact, at the end of the scroll, several men dressed in modern clothes- one seems to be wearing shades - gaze out over this absurd and hallucinatory scene.)
I think back to what I read at the beginning of the exhibition - that the landscape scroll is a journey through time as well as space. And today's experience is a powerful reminder of what is lost by hurrying that journey.
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