Art and the Ordered Universe:

Asian Views of Nature: China

by Dr. Roxanne Farrar

Fan Quon Travelers Among Mountains and Streams

This is a painting by one of the great artists of the Northern Sung era, Fan Quon. It is called Travelers Among Mountains and Streams. It is 7 1/2 feet tall. This slide is tiny compared to how big this painting is and it is the kind of painting that was very popular in China at this time. It is a hanging scroll, the kind of painting you roll up when you are not viewing it. When you want to display it, you unroll it and hang it up. One can almost look at this in literary terms. It is a painting that has three parts in one. The three separate parts all come together. Chinese paintings are read by starting at the bottom and moving up, just as one reads Chinese literature. The bottom is almost like the introduction of a book which introduces the themes to come. There are rocks and boulders in the foregrounds; they are an excellent example of qi. They represent matter or the material world.

Now, as we move up the scroll, there starts to be a balance between li and qu. Remember qi is the idea and li is the material world. The middle area of the scroll introduces the human element. There is human action and people here. These are travelers among mountains and streams. This is like a little horse or donkey of some sort pulling a cart. The people are very small; they look like little ants. The rocks are very big in comparison to the people. Try and imagine what it was like to travel back then. These people are undertaking enormous hardships to undergo this travel. You know they are really using their dedication and their will to over go this travel. This scroll painting points to the Taoist idea of the importance of perspective, and to the need to combine li and qi.

The third part of the painting is the mountain, which one can think of as pure li. The mountain represents nature, and for the Chinese, mountains are often a metaphor for the Tao or the divine. For the Chinese landscape painter, nature is the face of God; it is pure li, pure energy, pure idea. The scroll moves one up from brute matter, to a combination of li and qi, and finally to pure li. It is an upward movement; it is uplifting, and pulls your eyes and your spirit up. The idea is that one aspires toward pure li.

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