Landscape in the Arts

Expanding the art historian Benjamin Rowland's now classic comparative discussions of Art in East and West (1954), we recognize that landscape is not simply a Western idea or artistic theme. Indeed, for Chinese, Korean, and Japanese artists, landscape was a primary artistic motif centuries earlier than in the West, and their religious and cultural attitudes interpreted nature and thereby landscape as an independent topos at least from the early tenth century. Perhaps best represented by the Chinese name, shanshui, or "mountains and water," this Eastern esteem for landscape was predicated upon more than an appreciation or respect for nature, its awesome wonders, and its universal processes; there was also a recognition of the place of humanity within the natural world. It was believed that a retreat or temporary withdrawal from society or "the modern" into a situation permitting contemplation of nature—countryside, mountains, or desert—facilitated a revelation of the ever-present pervasive spirit of the universe. Thus the idea of the landscape was as a retreat for renewal of an individual's mind and refreshment of the spirit. However, this landscape, which had its own life force, was not to be depicted as an illustration, that is line for line, form for form; rather, the real essence of the landscape was to be captured in a style prophetic of "the romantic." The distinction is simply understood if the Greek signifies the West and the Chinese the East. Where the A visual harmony of tones and forms. Old Battersea Bridge (1872–1875) by James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Oil on canvas. TATE GALLERY, LONDON. © THE ART ARCHIVE Greek sought the personification (or anthropomorphization) of a grove or a tree, the Chinese saw a manifestation of the divine through the labors of the universal spirit.

Consider, for example, the renowned Chinese shanshui of Sage Contemplating the Moon by Ma Yüan (1200; Kuroda Collection, Tokyo), in which the economy of line and classic asymmetrical composition extends an invitation to the viewer to participate in the quietude and meditation of the reclining sage entranced within his contemplation of the vast emptiness before him and the singular present of the full moon. A potential Western conversation partner is Caspar David Friedrich's romantic vision of Two Men Contemplating the Moon (c. 1830; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). As beautiful a visual recording of this mysterious partnership between the two men and nature is, and as carefully as the viewer is invited through the painterly convention of interlocuter figures to participate in this experience, the visual differences between the Eastern and Western images are telling and help the viewer to recognize the cultural distinctions in the idea of landscape. Both paintings express the emotive power of the human connection with nature and the spirituality of this relationship. Both paintings could be classified within the Western category of romantic, with their soft edged forms, artistic focus on the evocation of mood, and presentation of nature mysticism.

Flatness of landscape, figures, and fireworks. Fireworks at Ryōgoku Bridge (mid-nineteenth century) by Hiroshige. © CHRISTIE'S IMAGES /CORBIS

However, Friedrich designed a series of internal spatial connectives between the mountainous foreground, the evergreen and gnarled empty trees, the distant mountainscape, and the two men that so clutter the canvas as to obscure the focus on the moon and thereby of the spiritual potential of nature. Further, his inclusion of two men who appear almost as partners in physical stature and social position suggests a common search for, and thereby discussion and explication of, the meaning of this encounter. Alternatively, Ma Yüan offers a simpler, more restrained vision of a mountainous landscape that includes a distorted gnarled tree and two men. However, these two men are separated not simply by the internal topographical barrier of a small mountain but also by their own physical size and social status. There is no internal conspiracy between them; rather, the sage and the boatman contemplate, each in his own way, the mystery and spiritual power of nature—the sage by concentrating on the moon, the boatman on the mountain. The large internal space given over by the artist to the void provides a sense of both the monumental vastness of the night sky and the place of the human within the context of the natural world. Further, this void provides a space in which the viewer, like the contemplative sage, can write her own story. One additional Mountains surreal, yet geologically precise. The Virgin of the Rocks (c. 1483) by Leonardo da Vinci. Oil on wood. © NATIONAL GALLERY COLLECTION. REPRODUCED BY KIND PERMISSION OF THE TRUSTEES OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON/CORBIS and perhaps ironic difference to note is that Friedrich employs a horizontal canvas and Ma Yüan a vertical one. Normally the former would be described as accessing the aesthetics of immanence and the latter the aesthetics of transcendence. However, this is open to debate, as these two paintings create internal attitudes toward the relationships of humanity with nature and of the human with the spirit.

Reversing the horizontal and vertical references is another comparison of Eastern and Western romantic views of landscape in James Abbott McNeill Whistler's Old Battersea Bridge (1872–1875; Tate Gallery, London) and Hiroshige's Fireworks at Ryūgoku Bridge (1858; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass.). Perhaps this visual consideration of the universal elements of landscape is enhanced by the fact that the American expatriate painter had seen, owned, and was influenced by Japanese woodblock prints such as Hiroshige's prior to his painting of the Old Battersea Bridge. Japonisme swept through Paris, especially among the artistic circles Whistler frequented, beginning in the late 1850s and reaching a fervor in the An interplay of vertical and horizontal forms. Mont Sainte-Victoire (1902–1904) by Paul Cézanne. Oil on canvas. PUSHKIN MUSEUM, MOSCOW, RUSSIA. © ALEXANDER BURKATOWSKI / CORBIS mid-1860s. Japonisme was a major influence on the development of both Impressionism and the art for art's sake movement. Whistler, foremost among all his Impressionist, symbolist, and art for art's sake colleagues, was affected by the visual principles and religio-aesthetics of Japan. Although much of the Japanese woodblock art and pottery that entered the European and American markets was made for export, thereby not necessarily within the proper boundaries of theme, design, and execution for a Japanese audience, Whistler had a discerning eye, and his own approach to painting was transformed by the finest among such objects.

Hiroshige's depiction of a summer fireworks display is visualized at early evening when the bridge is covered with diminutive figures who stand above the water and mountains almost like birds looking down on the natural environment. The foreground and background of the print is divided by the vertical lines forming the Ryūgoku Bridge, with the fireworks boats and the boats with passengers viewing the display, almost obliterating the river waters. The bridge also partially obscures a series of mountains and beaches in the background. The falling lights of the fireworks are condensed into a small segment of the night sky, yet again diffused by the bridge. The internal tonal arrangement of soft, neutral colors works in tandem with the complex patterning of lines and curves to create on first glance an abstract pattern distinguished by the character of "flatness." The details of the fireworks, the varied audiences, and even parts of the natural environment became homologous elements in the visual pattern of colors and forms. A work such as Hiroshige's requires careful looking, as the first glance suggests an unpopulated landscape.

Whistler's painting is even more abstract in its presentation of form and figure. He sought to create a visual harmony of tones and forms that create a mood similar to that evoked in a listener by music, even unto his minimizing of titles to musical parallels: Old Battersea Bridge is among his "Nocturnes." The enchanted garden. Humay and Humayun in a Garden (c. 1430). Manuscript illumination. PHOTO CREDIT: GIRAUDON/ART RESOURCE, NY To attain this effect he minimized the details, colors, forms, and lighting in paintings such as this, which he also distanced from a narrative. Through his presentation of the atmospheric relations of water, earth, and sky in a moment of poetic enchantment, Whistler invites the viewer to contemplation of the spirituality of landscape. However, what Whistler has also created here is a new vision, or perhaps a retrieval, of the classic mode, of the landscape of symbolic potential.

One of the major distinctions between Eastern and Western presentations of the landscape is the void. In the Chinese shanshui (landscape painting) the visual emphasis is as much upon the void as it is upon the sparsity of detailed renderings of botanical and topographical forms. Despite the economy of line, these paintings project the visual effect of nature. The placement of the majority of pictorial imagery left of center balances the void right of center to comprise the traditional asymmetrical composition favored by Chinese, Korean, and Japanese artists. However, the void has multiple roles, including a spiritual threshold for preparation to encounter the universal spirit and an aesthetic invitation to participate in this image of contemplation by painting or writing the viewer's own story in this otherwise empty space. The important socio-political function is clarified when a landscape with an empty poetry hall is contrasted to a landscape with the poetry hall filled in. The texts written into the poetry hall record the thinking of those who have contemplated the image with great care and, when the calligraphy includes seals, those of rank who saw the image in situ. The verses provide the viewer with a recognition of what others have experienced in front of this painting, perhaps as a spiritual guide or entry point for viewers who find images disturbing but words comfortable. Neither of these shanshui is a precise transcription of what this natural vista looks like; each depicts the spirit or essence of this landscape episode in the world of nature.

When these shanshui are compared with Western paintings in which the mountains perform a central, if not dominant, role, it becomes apparent that the fundamental distinction between East and West is in the spiritual and symbolic significance of the idea of landscape. The mountain connotes a variety of Western symbolic references, ranging from the classical Mediterranean "home of the gods" to the Hebraic monumental setting for conversations with Yahweh to the Christian site of transfiguration. The Chinese attitude toward the mountain is also multivalent and ranges from a site for celestial activity to a symbol of permanence and immensity. Shrouded in mist, clouds, or shadows, the mountains dissolve into a delicately splendid form that speaks to the senses rather than the intellect as the essence of the landscape.

Consider, for example, the surrealistic mountain formations found in the art of Leonardo da Vinci, which provide both a form of geological precision and an aura of mystery. His investigations of nature, and thereby his depictions of the landscape, were premised upon careful observation of the natural world and the anatomy of vision. Leonardo captured the rhythm and quiet energy of plants, water, and light. His passion for scientific investigation may have led him to the prominent inclusion of atmospheric blues in his renderings of the landscape, as in The Virgin of the Rocks (c. 1483; The National Gallery, London). The surreal shapes of the background mountains and After the Fall: the earth as a place of exile. October, calendar miniature from Les Très Riches Heures de le Duc de Berri (1413–16) by the Limbourg Brothers. PHOTO CREDIT: RÉUNION DES MUSÉES NATIONAUX /ART RESOURCE, NY surrounding rock distinguish this as a Western landscape premised upon the Greek principle of the personification: visual parallels between the rocks and human figures are evident in the gesturing hands and fingers and other extremities. By contrast, the Chinese strove to present the living spirit that vitalized the mountain in a painterly vision of mystical and lyrical aestheticism.

Paul Cézanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire (1902–1904; Pushkin Museum, Moscow) provides a Western approach to imaging the harmony of and within nature. A technical exercise in the interplay between vertical and horizontal forms, Cézanne's painting is divided into the traditional tripartite foreground, middle ground, and background. However, he creates a new way of understanding this perspectival relationship as his use of line and color moves the viewer's eye back and up toward Mont Sainte-Victoire, which is the object of his gaze. His experiments with brushwork provided him with the skill to create a rapid, loose brush stroke that results in an internal interplay between surface and depth, so that the viewer experiences a sense of perspective, depth, mass, and volume when there isn't any. America as the "new Eden." The Oxbow: The Connecticut River Near Northampton (1836) by Thomas Cole. Oil on canvas. METRO-POLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK CITY. GIFT OF MRS. RUSSELL SAGE. © FRANCIS G. MAYER/CORBIS Nonetheless, his explorations of the vista and monumentality of Mont Sainte-Victoire resulted in a series of regulated and erudite renderings of the landscape far removed from the spiritual attachment to nature fundamental to shanshui.