Organizer: Burglind Jungmann, University of California, Los Angeles
Chair: Donald F. McCallum, University of California, Los Angeles
Discussant: Song-mi Yi, Academy of Korean Studies
While in the West since the Renaissance we have become accustomed to seeing landscape painting in terms of realistic representation, our idea of East Asian landscape painting has been that of a "cosmic" or "mythic" or just non-realistic landscape. This impression, however, is misleading, because in China, Korea, and Japan, painters in fact made considerable efforts to depict scenic spots in a way they might have considered realistic or, at least, representative.
Besides discussing the terms and concepts of the representation of real scenery, including the idea of "realism," the panel wants to overcome the idea of "national arts" prevalent in writing on East Asia by showing how concepts and styles were transmitted and adopted by artists in China, Korea, and Japan.
Khanh Trinh and Rose E. Lee will introduce two major artists, Tani Bunchó and Chòng Sòn, whose works are representative of so-called "true views" or "true scenery" painting in Japan and Korea. Burglind Jungmann will trace the term "true scenery" in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese sources, and discuss questions such as when, where, and why the term was created and how it was transmitted from one country to another. Louise Yuhas will present the Chinese perspective on the problem drawing on her studies on Chinese paintings of actually existing scenery.
Discussant Yi Songmi is a renowned authority on Korean painting. The chairperson, Donald McCallum, a specialist in Japanese Buddhist art, has taught both Japanese and Korean art history.
Representations of Real Landscapes in Premodern Japan: Tani Bunchó’s "Paintings of a Journey by Boat through the Kumano Region"
Khanh Trinh, University of Zurich
This work shows landscapes from along the Kumano River between the important Shinto shrines Hongû and Shingû, in today’s Wakayama prefecture. According to the inscription, Tani Bunchó discovered the beauty of this section of the river through a boat-trip he once took.
The shrine-complexes of Hongû and Shingû have belonged, together with the Great Shrine in Nachi, to the "three pilgrimage sites in Kumano" (Kumano sanmô) since the 11th century. The earliest visual representations of these places occur in a religious context, and so emphasize their sacred aura rather than how they actually looked.
The travelling Sinophile literati (bunjin) of the beginning of the 18th century saw the picturesque river landscape in a more worldly, if at the same time paradisial light. Entranced by the natural drama, they felt as if they were themselves back in the Golden Age of the great Chinese scholars. Accordingly, the style of the old Chinese masters has left distinctive traces in their commemorative, so-called "true views" (shinkei). In such representations the connection to reality was neither necessary nor a goal; they depict rather the "landscape of the heart" of each individual artist.
Bunchó’s portrait of the legendary landscape is clearly distinguishable from these more conceptual approaches to representation, in that painting for him here is neither a field for the projection of religious or literary ideas, nor a manifestation of the artist’s own personality, but involves instead striving for objectivity in a re-presentation of nature.
Chòng Sòn’s Panoramic "True Views" of the Diamond Mountains: Real or Ideal Landscape?
Rose E. Lee, SOAS, University of London
Before the first half of the 18th century, the form and content of landscape painting in Korea was mainly based on adaptations or imitations of Chinese landscape art. Modern apologists have praised the products of this older stratum of Korean landscape art as creative "Koreanizations" of Chinese models. Those more critically inclined have faulted the same works as "idealistic" dinosaurs that were unrelated to Korean reality and impeded the creation of a purely Korean landscape art.
With the rise of national pride in Korean culture in the late Chosòn period, an original hand in landscape painting was found in Chòng Sòn (1676–1759). Better known by his sobriquet Kyòmjae: Chòng Sòn was an aristocrat (yangban) turned semi-professional painter who pioneered and developed "true view" (chjn’gyòng) landscapes into a national style.
Chòng Sòn’s chin’gyòng were based on actual Korean scenery rather than scenes copied from Chinese paintings and painting manuals. His "true views" of the Diamond Mountains rank among the best landscape paintings in the East Asian tradition.
Although recognizable as actual landscapes in which real sites and existing topographic features can be readily identified, they are far from photographic renditions. They take their content from the idealist worlds of Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism and their style from such anti-representational modes as map-making and literati painting. The result is depictions of landscape that are both real and ideal, personal and universal, unique to Korea yet accessible to outsiders.
The Creation of the Term "True Scenery" in China and Korea and its Spread to Japan
Burglind Jungmann, University of California, Los Angeles
The term "true scenery" for paintings of actually existing landscapes (Ch: zhenjing, K: chin’gyòng, J: shinkei) evolved along two distinct historical lines. Though the terms zhenjing and zhen shanshui were used in Chinese treatises of the 10th and 11th century, they never became popular in China. Apparently Chinese painters did not feel the need to distinguish between real and ideal in landscape painting.
Most probably it was the Korean painter and theorist Kang Sehwang (1713–1791) who in the middle of the 18th century "recreated" the term trying to give a name to a landscape genre that had already been en vogue for several decades. Kang Sehwang’s colophon for one of his own "true scenery" paintings of 1751 and other comments he made suggest that he felt a need to distinguish native Korean scenery from foreign landscape.
After the term chin’gyòng had become established in Korea it was most probably transmitted to Japan by way of Korean embassies. In his travel diary, the chief envoy to Japan of 1764, Cho Òm (1719–1777), recalls that he ordered the embassy’s painting official to sketch a "true scenery" painting during the journey. The earliest Japanese texts to use the term shinkei appear about twenty years later. They were written by painters, such as Ike Taiga (1723–1776), who had contact with Korean embassy members. The paper will investigate why the term was created and how it was transmitted.
Sights and Scenes of Suzhou: Local Scenery in Wu School Painting
Louise Yuhas, Occidental College, Los Angeles
The genres of topographical and travel painting grew greatly in popularity during the mid-Ming period, especially among Suzhou painters from the time of Shen Zhou into the 17th century. While painters like Lu Zhi and Wang Guxiang were among the early painters of distant places, they and others also represented the intimately familiar scenery of their immediate surroundings. Within the latter category, at least two sub-genres can be identified: paintings that contain easily recognizaible "markers" of sites like Tiger Hill, and paintings whose relationship to a particular place can only be identified through the artist’s inscription. I argue that the former type is often either not dedicated to a specific recipient or is identified as painted for someone from outside the region. The less recognizable depictions, on the other hand, are usually dedicated to members of the local literati and are more likely to be "situational" works. Paintings of both types are found in the oeuvres of Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming, Lu Zhi, and others, which I will examine in my paper.