February 1 – August 20, 2000
Douglas Dillon Galleries, C. C. Wang Family Gallery,
Frances Young Tang Gallery and
The Astor Court, north wing, second floor
The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present for more than six months beginning in February an exhibition of some 90 Chinese paintings, featuring images of ornamental rocks or landscapes inspired by the fantastic forms of such stones, complemented by more than 30 actual scholars' rocks. Drawn primarily from the Museum's holdings, and supplemented by a select number of loans from private collections, The World of Scholars' Rocks: Gardens, Studios, and Paintings – opening at the Metropolitan Museum on February 1, 2000 – will examine the Chinese taste for strangely shaped rocks during the last 1000 years, tracing through pictorial images as well as actual examples the evolution and transformation of the genre from the 11th to the 20th century.
The term "scholar's rock" is used to describe rocks of a distinctive shape, texture, and color that were deemed appropriate for display in the scholar's studio. The specimens selected for the exhibition – 15 of which have come to the Museum as promised gifts from the Richard Rosenblum family – range in size from desk-top pieces several inches in height to freestanding works several feet in height. Full-scale garden stones are represented by the rockeries in the Astor Court, a Ming-style scholar's garden court adjacent to the Dillon Galleries that is permanently on view at the Metropolitan.
Rocks have long been admired in China as an essential element in gardens. By the early Song dynasty (960-1279), small ornamental rocks were also collected as accoutrements of the scholar's study, and the portrayal of individual rocks – often joined with an old tree or bamboo – became a favorite and enduring pictorial genre. From the 14th century onward, depictions of gardens almost always included representations of a fantastic rock or "artificial mountain," and
scholars' rocks often supplanted actual scenery as sources of inspiration for images of landscape.
Especially prized are stones that have been sculpted naturally by processes of erosion or that appear to have been shaped by nature even if they have been artfully enhanced by man. Pitted, hollowed out, and perforated, such rocks, which are often displayed on end, are seen as embodiments of the dynamic transformational processes of nature. By the Tang dynasty (618-907), four principal aesthetic criteria – thinness (shou), openness (tou), perforations (lou), and wrinkling (zhou) – had been identified for judging scholars' rocks as well as the larger examples featured in gardens. Besides these formal qualities, rocks were also admired for their resemblance to mountains or caves, particularly the magical peaks and subterranean paradises (grotto-heavens) believed to be inhabited by immortal beings. Some rocks were appreciated for their resemblance to animals, birds, human figures, or mythical creatures.
Paintings of fantastic rocks appear as early as the eighth century, when a single elegant specimen, always combined with an ornamental tree or flower, was used to suggest a garden setting. Rock-and-tree paintings soon developed into a separate pictorial genre in which the auspicious associations of fantastic rocks were linked to the symbolic meanings of certain plants – such as a pine tree (longevity), bamboo (moral purity), peonies and hollyhocks (wealth and high rank) – to create images that were appropriate gifts for birthdays, the New Year, and other special occasions.
By the 17th century, the aesthetic ideals of painting and scholars' rocks were almost indistinguishable. Assemblages of fantastic rocks in a garden, often arrayed in front of a white wall, as in The Astor Court, might be inspired by compositional formulas developed in painted landscapes; conversely, the texturing and fantastic forms of painted landscapes often resembled those of scholars' rocks more than actual scenery. The passion for fantastic rocks culminated at this time with numerous "portraits" of actual and imagined specimens.
With the rise of monumental landscape painting in the 10th and 11th centuries, artists created images of mountains that recalled twisting plumes of smoke, upthrust spearheads, cumulo-nimbus clouds, or the triangular form of the ancient pictograph for mountain. These form-types were not only perpetuated in later landscape paintings, but also influenced scholars' taste in rocks.
To illustrate this point, the exhibition features a group of early monumental landscape paintings together with later scholars' rocks whose forms recall the landscape formations depicted in the paintings.
The exhibition also features a series of images of fantastic rocks depicted in garden settings. Palace Banquet, by an anonymous court painter of the 10th or early 11th century, depicts a palatial garden where rocks in the form of crouching animals serve as symbolic guardians to the imperial seraglio. Juxtaposed with this imposing large-scale image in color is one section from the Classic of Filial Piety executed around 1085 by Li Gonglin (ca. 1041-1106), one of the progenitors of scholar-painting, which shows a rock and bamboo in a private garden. An actual scholar's rock in the form of a rearing tiger that is dated to the Song dynasty (960-1279) provides a striking foil to the feline-like painted rocks in Palace Banquet, while a rock sculpted in jade and inscribed by the Qing emperor Qianlong (r. 1736-95) echoes the scalloped form of the rock in the Classic of Filial Piety.
Under the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1279-1368), calligraphic images of rocks and trees, or of fantastic mountains, became the principal vehicle for artists to express their feelings. As evidenced by a number of 14th-century masterpieces, the earlier emphasis on colorful paradisiacal imagery was rejected in favor of a new austere style that focused on self-expressive brushwork. Some examples in the exhibition are Twin Pines, Level Distance by Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322); and Fisherman and Lofty Virtue Reaching the Sky by Wu Zhen (1280-1354).
During the second half of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), as rocks became important emblems of scholarly status, numerous "portraits" of rocks celebrated the eccentricities of both artist and patron. Complementing the flamboyant pictorial images of rocks in this portion of the exhibition are equally fantastic actual specimens that closely correspond with the aesthetic ideals celebrated in painted examples. Three extraordinary rocks – Mountain with Grottoes, Rock with Large Perforations, and Rock with Peaks and Grottoes will be exhibited near two related paintings, Red Friend by Lan Ying (1583-ca. 1664) and the spectacular Ten Views of a Fantastic Rock by Wu Bin (active ca. 1583-1626).
The materialistic culture of the late Ming, with its overheated art market, collapsed with the
conquest of China by the Manchus in 1644. Artists who were loyal to the fallen Ming isolated themselves from the world of politics by returning to the natural world for inspiration, adopting bold kinesthetic brush styles that not only influenced such later artists as the 18th-century group of Yangzhou painters known as the Eight Eccentrics but also have remained popular among modern Chinese painters as well. In the same way, the eccentric styles of scholars' rocks established in the 17th century have continued to influence connoisseurs down to the present time.
Educational Programs
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Metropolitan Museum will offer a series of lectures, gallery talks, films, and programs for families and teachers.
The World of Scholars' Rocks: Gardens, Studios, and Paintings is organized by Maxwell K. Hearn, Curator in the Department of Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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November 10, 1999
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