The Emergence of Chinese Landscape Painting and the Philosophy of the Wei and Jin Dynasties

Abstract

The longest period of political disunity in the history of mainland China was comprised by the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. At this time, the country was riven with violence, with China’s celebrated martial arts occupying a prominent cultural and historical role. Broadly speaking, the same era saw a form of extended confrontation between south and north. The atmosphere of political strife inevitably generated misery for large swathes of the population. For many, the present provoked a sense of despair. Understandably, then, such individuals sought to focus on a nebulous, more favorable future, while popular consciousness reflected trends of seclusion and withdrawal from the world. At the same time, there was a marked increase in the human sense of affinity with nature. In addition to a rise in the popularity of metaphysical thought, furthermore, there was an increase in enthusiasm for Taoism and “foreign” Buddhism, combined with a relative decline in the allure of Confucianism. Inevitably, contemporary art was impacted by these cultural and philosophical developments. In the realm of painting, in particular, a sense of intellectual liberation gave rise to a proliferation of artistic modes and styles, in sharp contrast to the preceding period. Painting also became a favored pastime of China’s literati, and the era saw the emergence of numerous, highly skilled artists. Obvious examples included the Western Jin Dynasty’s Cao Buxing, and Gu Kaizhi in the Dynasty’s Eastern counterpart. Landscape painting, moreover, had begun to evince new developments by the time of the earlier Wei and Jin dynasties. Greater attention, for instance, was devoted to perspective and the delineation of depth. True, landscape art of the period was dominated by the color green, as one may see if one examines the piece, “The Sky and the Water are Empty Blue.” Nonetheless, during the dynasties of the Jin and Song, a love of personal freedom and an attraction to nature were combined with a flourishing of metaphysics. These phenomena provided fertile spiritual ground for the emergence of a more autonomous tradition of landscape painting. The latter grew in popularity, as appreciation of nature provided an impetus for artistic endeavor. Previously seen as an adjunct to other forms of artistic expression, landscape painting had largely established itself as an independent genre by the time of the Six Dynasties. Nevertheless, while the art of the period successfully evoked the beauty of rivers and mountains, form and structure remained naïve. Artists, for example, still relied heavily on traditional outlining, with little attention given to nuance or subtlety. At the same time, an objective appreciation of natural scenery and a subjective passion for “life” permitted a partial transcendence of immature technique. This gave rise, for example, to the particularly elegant and ethereal quality of landscape art in the wake of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. This artistic vision seemed redolent of a longing for personal freedom, latent in Chinese culture for centuries