The Spelling of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Template for Snapshot Content Area: _8__________________________________ Title/Designation: __Travelers among Mountains and Streams___________ Artist/Culture:____Fan Kuan________________________________ Medium:______Ink and Colors on Silk__________________________________ Creation Date: ___1000ce_______________________________ Creator’s Origin/Location___China_____________________ _________________________________________________ Snapshot: • Form o bold and straightforward example of Chinese landscape painting o Immense boulders occupy the foreground and are presented to the viewer at eye level. Just beyond them one sees detailed rocky outcroppings, covered with trees. Two men are driving a group of donkeys loaded with firewood and a temple is partially hidden in the forest. In the background a central peak rises from a mist-filled chasm and is flanked by two smaller peaks. This solid screen of rock takes up almost two-thirds of the picture. The central peak is accentuated by a tall waterfall plummeting from a crevice near the summit and disappearing into the narrow valley. o In the painting the mountains are shown frontally. To model the mountains, Fan Kuan used incisive thickening-and-thinning contour strokes, texture dots and ink wash. Strong, sharp brushstrokes depict the knotted trunks of the large trees. Detailed brushwork delineates the foliage and the fir trees along the upper edge of the ledge in the middle of the painting o To convey the sheer size of the landscape, Fan Kuan used suggestion rather than description. The gaps between the three distances (The boulders in the foreground, the tree-covered rock outcropping in the middle, and the peaks in the background) act as breaks between changing views. The three scenes do not physically connect; they are comprehended separately--one must mentally jump from one distance to the next. o Fan Kuan’s landscape shows how the use of scale can dramatically heighten the sense of vastness and space. • Function o In his painting, Fan Kuan expressed a “cosmic vision of man’s harmonious existence” in a large but orderly universe. The Neo-Confucian search for absolute truth in nature and self-cultivation, which reached its climax in the 11th century, heavily influences his work. Nearly seven feet tall, the hanging scroll presents universal creation in its totality. • Content o The mountain form accurately captures the geological traits of southern Shaanxi and northwestern Henan provinces–thick vegetation grows only at the top of the bare steep-sided cliffs in thick layers of fine-grained soil known as loess. The mountains are triangular with deep crevices. o China’s natural landscape has played an important role in the shaping of the Chinese mind and character. The Chinese viewed mountains as sacred and imagined them as the home of immortals. o • Deeply influenced by Neo-confucianist and daoist ideas about finding truth in nature Context (included information about the original and subsequent historical and cultural milieu, location of the work, display, life of the artist, and movement, when appropriate) o During the Five Dynasties period in the 10th century (an era of political upheaval when five dynasties quickly succeeded one another in the north, and more than twelve independent states were established in the south), scholars who fled to the mountains saw the tall pine tree as representative of the virtuous man. o In the early Northern Song dynasty that followed, from the mid-10th to the mid-11th century, gnarled pine trees and other symbolic elements were transformed into the grand landscape style. o Fan Kuan was one of the scholars who fled the five dynasties period and lived as a recluse. He was one of many poets and artists of the time who were disenchanted with human affairs. He turned away from the world to seek spiritual enlightenment. o The development of Monumental landscape painting coincided with that of Neo-Confucianism— a reinterpretation of Chinese moral philosophy. It was Buddhism that first introduced a system of metaphysics and a coherent worldview more advanced than anything known in China. Beginning in the late Tang and early Northern Song (960-1127), Neo-Confucian thinkers rebuilt Confucian ethics using Buddhist and Daoist metaphysics.