Landscapes as Labors of Love: Wang Hui at the Met

Drawing from the art of the past is a necessary and nurturing process for an artist, a labor of love that enables him to learn his craft and to reinvent his influences. The medieval painter and theorist Cennino Cennini instructed that an artist should copy only from the best masters he can find, so that he will learn to gather “roses,” not “thorns.” Picasso, who could paint like Raphael, Ingres, Corot, an ancient cave painter, and an ancient Greek, advocated that an artist must not “borrow” but, rather, “steal” (a distinction that stresses ownership over influence). Picasso also stated that artists should indeed copy from other artists, and that in doing so they will undoubtedly fail — and that it is precisely in their failures that they will discover themselves.And yet the age-old process of copying, fusing, and reinventing the art of the past is not unique to the West, a fact that is beautifully demonstrated in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s dreamy exhibition “Landscapes Clear and Radiant: The Art of Wang Hui (1632-1717).”Wang Hui, considered the pre-eminent 17th-century Chinese landscape painter, did not just copy from the art of the past: Like Picasso, he revived and synthesized various styles. “I was at a loss about how to paint,” Wang wrote. “My limited understanding could not discern the subtle points….I took all these [conflicting schools] into my heart and practiced [them] with my hand.” He later proclaimed: “I must use the brush and ink of the Yuan to move the peaks and valleys of the Song, and infuse them with the breath-resonance of the Tang. I will then have a work of the Great Synthesis.”Reinventing Chinese painting, Wang made the landscape distinctly his own, especially in his series of 12 vast panoramic landscape hand scrolls that he created for the Kangxi Emperor and completed in 1698. Each silk hand scroll, measuring from 40 to 80 feet in length, commemorates episodes of Kangxi’s second Southern Inspection Tour.Two of these enormous, miraculous, map-like hand scrolls, very different from each other in composition, temperament, and tempo, are the climax of the show at the Met. Telescopic and microscopic, filled with thousands of tiny figures, buildings, branches, and leaves, they are animated by staccato rhythms worthy of Canaletto, infinite detail worthy of Islamic miniatures, twisted, calligraphic forms worthy of van Gogh, and dense, undulating, and languid mountains, streams, rocks, and skies — romantic dreamscapes reminiscent of Claude or Corot. Upon completion of the series, the emperor bestowed upon Wang the encomium “Landscapes Clear and Radiant” — fitting praise indeed.The first half of this scholarly and art-historically rich show, organized by Maxwell Hearn, Douglas Dillon Curator in the Met’s Department of Asian Art, is devoted to Chinese art before Wang. The first four galleries lavishly establish the range and beauty of Old Master Chinese painting styles and approaches — including the Song (960-1127), Southern Song (1127-1279), Yuan (1271-1368), and early Ming (1368-1644) Dynasties — as well as the importance of Wang’s mentors, all of which inspired Wang, and were fused by the painter into innovative and fresh works of astounding variety and originality.It is important, especially if you are unfamiliar with the history of Chinese painting, to immerse yourself in the first galleries. Not only will you see masterpieces and begin to understand the differences among the veiled, twinkling, misty light of Qu Dong’s “Summer Mountains” (11th century); Mi Youren’s washy, tranquil, and fragmentary “Cloudy Mountains” (12th c), and Shen Zhou’s stippled Impressionist brushstrokes in the handscroll “Autumn Colors Among Streams and Mountains” (15th century) — you will also be prepared for the joyous “synthesis” of these artists in the landscapes of Wang. Looking back and forth between the first and second halves of the exhibition, I could sense artistic influence and lineage, as if I were witnessing organic or familial qualities among grandparents, great-grandparents, parents, and children, spanning across centuries.Wang, like Picasso, had a voracious appetite. He devoured and regurgitated the art of the past. He also had lyrical, expressionist, and classical modes — sometimes all in the same painting. In Wang’s hanging scroll “Dense Snow on the Mountain Pass,” forms are as suggestive, solid, and silvery as Leger’s Cubist conflations. The hanging scroll “Clearing After Rain Over Streams and Mountains” (1662) is felt in economical fragmentary pressures of mountain peak, contour, and stippled branch. The hand scroll “Summer Mountain, Misty Rain” (1668) is infused with a smoky light, as if its forms had been burned into place. Dense yet open, felt in starts and stops, the landscape passes like a mirage.The Met’s exhibition establishes very well the range and variety of influences on Wang. The show also makes a lot of art-historical hay out of the stylistic differences between what the curators deem as expressive, meditative, calligraphic, and “abstract,” or “scholar’s art,” and more representational, decorative, descriptive, and naturalistic painting. Yet there are no true abstract landscapes in the exhibition — at least not by Western standards. These landscapes were composed by looking at past art and, as if by a poet after a long walk while meditating in the mountains, like reflective verse.In the best of Wang’s landscapes, forms are not described but, rather, seemingly conjured into being. His landscapes read like poetic flashes. Somewhere among form, reflection, and shadow, his mountains, rivers, clouds, and trees are felt not as objects, but as pressures, memories, and essences.Wang’s landscapes are enigmatic. They appear to fall naturally into place, like water passing over stones or wind moving through grasses. Yet mountains can dissolve and air can feel heavy. A sense of melancholy, drifting hand in hand with a sense of monumentality, can waft through his spaces. Scale can abruptly shift, throwing faraway forms into focus; and space and time can unfold, or fold back in on themselves, with elasticity and ease. Sometimes, Wang’s landscapes become transparent and Surreal, as if, in the overlap of a branch, passageways opened into sky and mountain.Wang’s landscapes are forceful. They shine with natural light. But they are born of meditation — a meditation that fuses the artist’s feelings with the art of the past. In these landscapes, we are looking not at nature but, rather, through a poet’s eye — somewhere inward, distant, beyond. Wang’s landscapes are so full, clear, and radiant, precisely because they were seen behind closed eyes.Until January 4 (1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd Street, 212-535-7710).

Landscapes as Labors of Love: Wang Hui at the Met

Landscapes as Labors of Love: Wang Hui at the Met

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