DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.67683#0634
440
CHINA
hold us. Visual facts are there — the structure of the rocks, the
mighty upward thrust of the mountains, their mass and solidity;
the form of the tree trunks, and the shapes and masses of foliage
that weave interesting patterns against the distance; the en-
veloping of all forms in atmosphere, and the precise values in
the trees and mountains as they recede into the illimitable
distance. But mere visual truth is subordinate to the mood, to
the emotional power that fills the picture. We can easily imagine
how Tung Yuan from a somewhat elevated position like that
of the spectator sat meditating upon this scene, as we see a sage
meditating in Pl. 169 a. Days and perhaps months he spent in
this way until, as the accidental and ephemeral appearance was
lost sight of, he felt and so he saw the scene as the interpretation
of a rare, noble mood of a harmonious and infinite nature. So
attuned was he finally to this poetic mood, and so trained was
his hand technically to follow his mind and his emotions, that
he quickly, spontaneously, and unerringly transferred his feelings
to the paper. And we, if we gradually and sympathetically feel
ourselves into the picture, will find that it evokes in us the
same noble reposeful mood as it did in Tung Yuan, a mood that
is close to that of music. This idea Dr. Laufer has expressed
with extraordinary insight when he says:
Such creations ... no doubt belong to the greatest emanations of art of all
times. . . . The T‘ang masters were not naturalists, idealists, romanticists nor
were they one-sidedly given to any of our narrow -isms exclusively. They were,
in the first place, symphonists in the sense of our music. . . . There is but one
giant in our art to whom Wang Wei and Li Se-siin can be adequately compared,
and that is Beethoven. The same lofty thoughts and emotions expressed by
Beethoven . . . find an echo in the works of those Chinese painters. The Adagio
of the Fifth Symphony is the text interpreting the noble transcendental spirit per-
vading the painted scenery of Li Se-siin, and the Pastoral Symphony is the transla-
tion into music of the Wang cb'uan t‘u. We shall better appreciate Chinese
painting, if we try to conceive it as having no analogy with our painting, but as
being akin to our music. Indeed, the psychological difference of Chinese painting
from our own mainly rests on the basis that the Chinese handle painting, not as we
handle painting, but as we handle music, for the purpose of lending color to and
evoking the whole range of sentiments and emotions of humanity. In depth of
thought and feeling, the great T’ang masters, in their symphonic compositions,
vie with Beethoven, and in line and color almost reach Mozart’s eternal grace and
beauty. . . . Chinese pictorial art, I believe, is painted music, with all its shades
. . . of expressive modulation.11
For the expression of the facts of nature, the Chinese had cer-
tain formulas that were taught as fundamentals of art education.
For example, there were sixteen ways of drawing mountains,
u Berthold Laufer, “ A Landscape of Wang Wei,” in Ostasiatische Zeitschrifl, v. I (1912), p. 54-
CHINA
hold us. Visual facts are there — the structure of the rocks, the
mighty upward thrust of the mountains, their mass and solidity;
the form of the tree trunks, and the shapes and masses of foliage
that weave interesting patterns against the distance; the en-
veloping of all forms in atmosphere, and the precise values in
the trees and mountains as they recede into the illimitable
distance. But mere visual truth is subordinate to the mood, to
the emotional power that fills the picture. We can easily imagine
how Tung Yuan from a somewhat elevated position like that
of the spectator sat meditating upon this scene, as we see a sage
meditating in Pl. 169 a. Days and perhaps months he spent in
this way until, as the accidental and ephemeral appearance was
lost sight of, he felt and so he saw the scene as the interpretation
of a rare, noble mood of a harmonious and infinite nature. So
attuned was he finally to this poetic mood, and so trained was
his hand technically to follow his mind and his emotions, that
he quickly, spontaneously, and unerringly transferred his feelings
to the paper. And we, if we gradually and sympathetically feel
ourselves into the picture, will find that it evokes in us the
same noble reposeful mood as it did in Tung Yuan, a mood that
is close to that of music. This idea Dr. Laufer has expressed
with extraordinary insight when he says:
Such creations ... no doubt belong to the greatest emanations of art of all
times. . . . The T‘ang masters were not naturalists, idealists, romanticists nor
were they one-sidedly given to any of our narrow -isms exclusively. They were,
in the first place, symphonists in the sense of our music. . . . There is but one
giant in our art to whom Wang Wei and Li Se-siin can be adequately compared,
and that is Beethoven. The same lofty thoughts and emotions expressed by
Beethoven . . . find an echo in the works of those Chinese painters. The Adagio
of the Fifth Symphony is the text interpreting the noble transcendental spirit per-
vading the painted scenery of Li Se-siin, and the Pastoral Symphony is the transla-
tion into music of the Wang cb'uan t‘u. We shall better appreciate Chinese
painting, if we try to conceive it as having no analogy with our painting, but as
being akin to our music. Indeed, the psychological difference of Chinese painting
from our own mainly rests on the basis that the Chinese handle painting, not as we
handle painting, but as we handle music, for the purpose of lending color to and
evoking the whole range of sentiments and emotions of humanity. In depth of
thought and feeling, the great T’ang masters, in their symphonic compositions,
vie with Beethoven, and in line and color almost reach Mozart’s eternal grace and
beauty. . . . Chinese pictorial art, I believe, is painted music, with all its shades
. . . of expressive modulation.11
For the expression of the facts of nature, the Chinese had cer-
tain formulas that were taught as fundamentals of art education.
For example, there were sixteen ways of drawing mountains,
u Berthold Laufer, “ A Landscape of Wang Wei,” in Ostasiatische Zeitschrifl, v. I (1912), p. 54-