26_1-8

6
No.26 APRIL 24, 2018
CULT URE
WWW.DAY.KIEV.UA
From hermits’ huts
to a monastery of saints
By Maria PROKOPENKO,
photos by Artem SLIPACHUK, The Day
The tallest secular building in
ancient China could only be two
stories high. There was an
unwritten rule: you should not
build your own mansion taller
than the neighboring one, all for the sake
of maintaining good relations in the
community. However, already in the
days of the Song dynasty, reigning in the
10th to 13th centuries, there were
government-approved norms of urban
design as well. We learned about this at
the “Palace in the Mountains”
exhibition, which continues at the
National Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko
Museum of Art. The exhibits include
24 scrolls dating to the 18th through
20th centuries, as well as Chinese works
of decorative and applied arts, all coming
from the collection of the museum.
● A PICTURE AS A DRAWING
Chinese understood the importance
of the type of space created by a person.
Thus, there was even a separate genre of
painting which depicted buildings, called
jiehua, that is, “picturing the world.”
Thanks to Chinese artists’ liking for
copying classic models, the Khanenko
Museum lets one to get an idea of the different
periods of the genre’s history, because
many of the works presented are
remakes of more ancient works.
“Chinese architectural painting is a
variety of the genre of ‘mountains and
water,’ that is, landscape. Buildings
should fit into the landscape where
mountains, water bodies, clouds, trees,
lumps of stone have already been harmonized.
Into this inconceivable, arbitrary,
to some extent chaotic, natural environment,
the artist should insert something
that has precise measurements and
is painted with the help of a ruler,”
said Marta Lohvyn, the curator of the exhibition
and a leading research fellow at
the Oriental art department of the Khanenko
Museum.
A ruler is not a metaphor. There
was the gongbi style, literally meaning
“meticulous brush.” It demanded very
careful detailed painting, even down to a
bird’s feathers, and clear lines, so the
buildings were painted with the help of a
special ruler without a scale. Moreover,
The Khanenko Museum presents Chinese architectural
landscapes. Most works are shown for the first time
such paintings could serve as drawings,
allowing one to constructareal mill or distillery.
However, Lohvyn added that this
skill had been lost after the Song’s demise.
● DREAMING OF A HUT
In contrast to the gongbi, there was
also the xieyi style, that is, “conveying
meanings.” Its main feature was to convey
the general impression of a subject.
An artist, often a titled and enlightened
individual, conveyed the shape of, say,
a mountain temple with several impetuous
lines. This style was popular under
the Ming dynasty, which lasted
from the 14th to the 17th century.
“Court intrigues meant a lot at the
time, and courtiers dreamed of becoming
hermits, they liked to paint it at
least,” Lohvyn said. “Courtiers believed
that only artisans were interested in
making a precise engraving of something
in stone, lacquer or ivory. Meanwhile,
these free artists and scholars sought to
get rid of social conventions and paint
figuratively. For example, they painted
hermits, with whom they identified
themselves. Also, they left on scrolls
many inscriptions, telling about themselves,
their sources of inspiration and
other things.”
However, the emperor probably never
tired of the magnificence and detail.
Lohvyn mentioned the story of Qiu
Ying, a 16th-century master who first
created lacquered items, and then mastered
painting and very accurately depicted
architecture in his works. The
works of this artist impressed the
supreme ruler so much that he made the
painter a courtier.
The skill of Chinese artisans is really
impressive. The exhibition “Palace in
the Mountains” displays a 19th-century
bamboo stack for brushes, which surprises
the viewer not only with the accuracy
of landscapes, but also with their
three-dimensional nature.
● A PR PICTURE
Along with huts, Chinese artists
painted also palaces, both real and fictional.
For instance, one of the scrolls depicts
white-robed saints taking a walk on
the terraces of a grand building far
away in the mountains.
Images of real palaces could become
political advertisements as well. For example,
look at a picture of the legendary
Pavilion of Prince Teng. It was built in
the 7th century and described in folk
songs, but it suffered a lot throughout its
history from civil strife, experiencing
29 rebuildings. The picture of the rebuilt
monument, painted in the 19th century,
shows the wisdom of the then rulers.
Some palaces captivated imagination
of artists for many centuries. Jade Terraces
on a Spring Morning is the poetic
title of a painting done in the manner of
Li Sixun, who lived in the 7th and 8th
centuries. It depicts a palace of the Han
era, which lasted from the 3rd century
BC to the 3rd century AD. In his time,
Li was inspired by the grandeur and scale
of ancient palaces, and his take on this
subject became canonical, so that paintings
from different centuries which are
based on his work are held by museums
all over the world.
● A DIZZYING LANDSCAPE
The Old Toper’s Pavilion is the oldest
such building in China, having been
constructed in 1045. The “Palace in the
Mountains” exhibition displays a painting
depicting it, which was created in the
manner of the abovementioned Qiu. The
pavilion is still there after numerous alterations,
but the artist portrayed it in
a free manner, adding something from
himself.
The structure has nothing to do
with topers, or drunkards, apart from
the fact that one can get drunk from the
landscape that can be observed from it,
because this monument is located on a
dizzying mountain winding road. “It was
built by a very talented writer, historiographer,
and calligrapher Ouyang Xiu,”
Lohvyn said. “He was a courtier, occupied
a high position, but his wife’s relatives
fell into disgrace through some intrigue,
and he suffered with them.
Ouyang was sent to a noble exile where
he served as imperial governor of the remote
Anhui province. The scholar was
only 38, but he felt tired of life and invented
his pseudonym ‘Old Toper.’ On
the scroll, we see a text of his authorship,
an elegy about this pavilion.”
Ouyang was the author of the pavilion’s
idea and helped with attracting
workers. His monk friend designed the
structure, and a local moneybag funded
construction.
● A MYSTERIOUS BIRD
Among the scrolls on display, there
is a horizontal one, entitled A Goose Released.
It is three meters long, so spectators
can see only a small part of it. In
general, such scrolls were never hung on
the walls, as they were watched like
filmstrips instead.
“Spectators went from right to left.
They unwrapped the scroll one cubit a
time, watched the opened fragment,
rolled it in and moved on, unwrapped another
fragment, and so on to the end,”
explained the curator of the exhibition.
“A small company could gather for that
purpose, people ate delicious meals,
drank wine, watched the scrolls and
discussed them. Then they could write
something on colophons, which are special
strips of paper which are added in
front or behind a scroll, creating something
like a book of reviews.”
The painting tells the story of a man
who has released a bird. At first, this
work was stored in a museum under the
title A Swan Released. This identification
was based on the description made by the
secretary of the diplomat Andre Stefane
Jaspar, whose collection the work
previously belonged to. Swan’s Chinese
name is literally translated as “heavenly
goose,” so the researchers later decided
that it depicted a goose. And only recently,
having read the author’s signature
on the scroll itself, Lohvyn realized
that the bird was actually a crane.
“But whatever bird is depicted here,
it is barely outlined on the scroll, and we
show the part where it is absent,” Lohvyn
smiled. “Here we were interested in the
diversity of different buildings: houses on
piles and on the ground, boats, and a pass
with a check point housing a temple.”
● A PATRON’S GIFT
The scrolls from the exhibition came
into the Khanenko Museum in 1959, donated
and sold by Taisia Jaspar. She was
the wife of the aforementioned Chinabased
French diplomat Jaspar, who
owned a collection of Chinese art. Subsequently,
Taisia Jaspar settled in Kyiv.
After the death of her husband, she inherited
most of his collection, which she
then donated to the museum.
“We showed one scroll from this
project at an exhibition in 2014, and several
others at another exhibition a few
years ago. Others have not been shown
before at all,” Lohvyn added.
Going by ancient Chinese standards,
the exhibition at the Khanenko Museum
is a manifestation of great generosity. In
the Middle Kingdom, scrolls were hung
on display for several months, and then
wrapped up and kept carefully.
So, do not miss the opportunity to
take a walk amidst Chinese architectural
landscapes. The “Palace in the
Mountains” exhibition will run until
May 13.