Picturing Listening: The Sight of Sound in Chinese Painting Author(s): Susan E. Nelson Source: Archives of Asian Art, Vol.

51 (1998/1999), pp. 30-55 Published by: University of Hawai'i Press for the Asia Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20111282 . Accessed: 19/10/2011 22:14
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Picturing
Susan University E. Nelson of

Listening:

The

Sight of Sound

in Chinese

Painting

Indiana

on landscape painting recorded in The Forests and Streams (Linquan gaozht), Guo of Lofty Message Xi (ca. iooo-ca. 1090) has harsh words for two paintings showed a man facing a mountain, of recent times. One chin in hand; the other, a man "inclining his ear before a a pair, made to illustrate they were gorge." Evidently In his comments aphorism that "humane people take pleasure in wise people take pleasure in water." Such styl mountains, ized, theatrical postures of looking and listening?gazing to at the mountains, listening appreciatively thoughtfully a poor way to convey the the sound of a waterfall?were Confucius' in Guo's of landscape, opinion; profound significance "How could the enjoyment of the humane and the wise be represented just by a figure's pose?"The landscape itself was of Confucius' meaning. superior models, Guo cites two paintings by Tang and wrote about their own dynasty poets who painted of beloved country retreats: a scroll by Bo Juyi (772-846) and one by Wang Wei his studio in the Lu Mountains, villa on the (699-759) of his waterside Wang River.1 These the best vehicle As pictures of presumably in such expansive
virtuous

and Li portrays him contemplating it in sev countryside, eral attitudes: sitting pensively by the waterside, standing by a tree and gazing afar, and so on. The scene reproduced here (Fig. 2), the third in the scroll, illustrates a famous pas sage from the text:
Cane in hand Iwalk and rest head Occasionally The clouds The to gaze into the distance. raising my rise from the peaks, it is time to come home. flying, know

aimlessly of birds, weary

were were
the

the landscape, and the figures in them It is small and relatively inconspicuous. of the chosen retreats of visualizations
mountains, forests, and streams,

and wise?of

of

in and changing seasons, weather, light?that delight is to be conveyed, not in the studied posturings landscape of an appreciative figure. Guo Xi, of course, was a painter of landscapes. His Early Spring (Zaochun; dated to 1072) in the National

in Taipei?a Palace Museum magnificent a scattering of tiny figures go in which mountainscape to the scene?may about their humble business, oblivious be taken as a visual statement of his ideas on this subject s remark a testy reaction to new developments taking place around the time of his own old of gaz The human response to nature, the experience age? or listening as a pictorial theme in itself, was a subject ing interest to painters in the late eleventh cen of emerging are several such scenes of observation and There tury. in Li Gonglin's illustration of (ca. 1041?1107) enjoyment Tao Yuanming's Home (365?427) Returning (Guiqulat), about his life in retirement, a composi great prose-poem in in an early copy in the Freer Gallery tion preserved D.C.3 Tao's poem tells of his pleasure in the Washington, 30 (Fig. i)-2 Was Guo in painting

(ca. 1000-ca. Fig. 1.Guo Xi on ink and color scroll; Museum, Taipei.

1090), Early silk; 158.3

Spring. Dated x cm. 108.1

to 1072. Hanging National Palace

^H^^^^SB^B^^^BMMMl^BfflSi^ff^py? ^^^^^PyBsS?j?JiF|Sl?'^?j^^K^^^BI^KS^EM^^HfcJ^BM^^B^^^^^Hi^HE??f.''' ^^, pR^t ^y?.

As

Iwalk

the sun s rays grow dim and disappear around a lonely pine tree, stroking

from it.4

view

Not the landscape, but the poet's responses to it are the of Li Gonglin s, the subject here. In another composition Mountain Villa (Shanzhuang) handscroll favorite depicting sites in the region in the Longmian of his retreat in Anhui Province, Mountains the terrain is amply popu lated by seated, standing, and walking figures admiring the the onomatopoetically scenery. In the section showing named Lingling Gorge, aman sits on a rock at the base of awaterfall as his servant approaches with a cup of wine; to

the left, another man with a staff stands on a ledge above a are turning stretch of rocky rapids (Fig. j).5 Both their currents. An heads toward the splashing responsively poem by Li's friend Su Che (1039-1112) accompanying describes the site, directing attention to the experiences of the men amidst the sonorous reverberations of wind and
water: From The As the men layered cliffs falls a flying stream; floats through the tall trees. sit in forgetfulness in the gorge, by lutes and harps.6

A breeze

if surrounded

(ca. 1041-1107), Fig. 3. Li Gonglin section of Mountain Villa. "Lingling Gorge," ink on paper; 27.7 x 513 cm. Handscroll; Palace Museum, Beijing.

31

have thought of them, apprecia in landscape nature-loving figures settings, first a major in paintings like these, were to become appearing on. Their pres theme of pictures from the twelfth century ence radically altered the focus of landscape pictures. They on the also reflect (and bestir) an increased self-awareness tive,
part of the picture's viewers, an alertness to their own per

Whatever

Guo Xi may

as they look at the image. ceptual experiences are almost The in these pictures observant figures to be gazing, but that is a very invariably understood the quality of attention way of describing incomplete they direct toward the landscape. The activity of listening has a strong presence as well, and one that has been large seems a real oversight, This ly overlooked. considering the importance accorded sound in traditional Chinese and epistemology, and the attention that has cosmology to it by thinkers?philosophers, been scientists, paid as well?in their poets and, Iwill argue, picture-makers to grasp and represent the workings efforts of nature. The in Chinese and present essay is about listening painting, about questions related to the semiotics of sound in the to direct attention to the It undertakes pictorial medium. to of aural ideas in Chinese pervasive presence pictures, some of the ways they announce and to the themselves, interface between sound and the problematic pictured act of viewing. Sound in nature, its role as an instrument of knowledge, and the access it offers to transmundane realms constitutes an immense body of Chinese i below thought. Section some that served as summarizes aspects of it, emphasizing 2 in the pictorial tradition. Sections points of reference and 3 consider sound in Chinese pictures from two per spectives: that of the listening figure as a subject of paint itself. ing; and that of the listening viewer of the painting

in the Pines (ca. io8o-ca. 1150), Wind Fig. 4. Li Tang to 1124. Hanging scroll; ink and color Valleys. Dated Palace Museum,Taipei. 139.8 cm. National

of Ten Thousand on silk; 188.7 x

THE PIPING OF HEAVEN

What whether students of nature listen for are passages? a few notes or extended themes?from the grand described composition by the classic Daoist philosopher (4th c. BCE): Zhuangzi
The out breath and its name iswind. [the earth] belches come forth, So long as it doesn't it does, nothing happens. But when then ten thousand hollows crying out. Can't you hear them, begin Great Clod forests that lash and sway, there are long drawn out? In the mountain trees a hundred hollows and openings like spans around with roar like waves, whis like mouths, like ears, like jugs.... They tle like arrows, screech, gasp, cry, wail, moan, and howl, those in the out yeeel, those behind out yuuul.... Have lead calling you calling seen the tossing and trembling that goes on?7

things in a different way, so that each can be itself."When the cosmic system you hear these noises, you are hearing itself. The piping of of Li Tang's (ca. Thousand Valleys Palace Museum, a rock, without major painting ably carried on Kuan's Travellers xingl?) of about of rock rising approach, which ished mountain, tive, has yielded the earth is, in fact, the essential subject 1080?ca. in the Pines of Ten 1150) Wind (Wangu songfeng) of 1124 in the National a rough, powerful landscape of pine and of this single figure (Fig. 4). Discussion in modern is almost invari scholarship in the context of a comparison with Fan among Streams and 1000, also a scene of a wooded behind to the calls attention Mountains (Xishan a mountainous wall

huge noses,

never

This great wind concert of the earth?Zhuangzi calls it "the piping of the earth"?and the "flutes and whistles" of the "piping ("the piping of man") people together make on the ten thousand is the "Blowing of heaven," which 32

narrowed focus, some formidable overlook the important fact that Li Tang's painting is not a mountain in the sense that Fan really painting Kuan's is. Li's chief subject is the windy murmuring of the great pines massed in the foreground, echoed by the

That foreground.8 later work's dimin and lowered perspec insights, but it tends to

on the ledges above and underlined by the steady of the stream. The craggy backdrop intensifies splashing and concentrates the sense of sound, like the irregular in today's acoustically the musicians walls behind sophis ticated concert halls. is both metaphor and manifestation Wind of the qi, or groves fundamental vitality, that propels the processes of interac in the world; the character qi has tion and transformation the sense of "breath," which makes wind rather more than a for it. Feng, "wind," pervades the discourses of metaphor that movement, change, and feeling; the many compounds include it?fengjing, fengsu, fengliu, fengqi, fengge (roughly:
scenery, customs, currents, atmosphere, style), and dozens

to stalk. These sound-channels against a bamboo knocking release may be thought of as auditory equivalents spiritual
of spatial passages to other worlds, such as the cave-tunnel

in the Peach Blossom

The sounds of

Spring.
may contribute to revelation in a

nature

Neo-Confucian

as well. Kathlyn Liscomb has to understand that this is the way argued convincingly Shen Zhou's painting of his Night Vigil (Yezuo; 1492) in the in Taipei. In a lengthy inscrip National Palace Museum framework the upper half of the scroll, Shen recounts his experiences during a night of "quiet sitting." In the silence of the evening, as his mind and senses gradually settle and aware of sounds?wind in the bamboo, clear, he becomes distant drums and bells. Listening, he finds dogs barking, of things and lessons in moral insight into the principles account Shen has pictured resolve.14 Below this written himself seated in a candle-lit pavilion amidst the humming the space around him a bub landscape of his compound, tion filling ble
above

and processes central in the universal and human systems.9 Wind/g/ manifests itself, as in Zhuangzi's and it has passage, largely through sound, in China is a primary that hearing long been understood channel between the mind and the world outside. As the of others?refer scrutinizes the "dragon veins" geomancer (longmo), the currents of force in the earth, the wind-listener parses the not sensation, is currents of force in the air. Knowledge, the wind-listener's goal. As others have noted, hearing as sight does in the in China functions metaphorically West, connoting perception; comprehension, comparable to "I see" in English is zhiyin, "know the tone," in
Chinese?an expression for superior understanding.10

to motions

of perceptual
suggests

awareness. A
atmosphere,

clear mist
movement,

hovering
and

just

unseen

is, the world of airborne sounds. less optimistic insights came to Ouyang Xiu one heedful night, which he recorded (1007-1072) during in Sounds ofAutumn in 1059), a prose-poem (Qiushengfu; ones with the same title by Li Deyu the tradition of earlier a confusion and LiuYuxi (787-850) (772-842).I5 Hearing things?that Harsher,
of mysterious, evocative sounds on an autumn evening?

Zhuangzi
Don't with ears, waits

admonished
listen with

the seeker of knowledge:

don't listen your mind. No, your ears, listen with listen with the your mind, your stops with spirit qi. Listening the mind but the spirit is empty and stops with recognition, on all in emptiness is alone. Emptiness things. The Way gathers of the mind.11

the fasting

soft at first, pattering and rustling, then surging like waves and clanging like metal, finally raging like armies at war? sends his servant to look about. The lad sees only Ouyang " moon he tells his master, the and the stars; "the sounds that these sounds of ruination, are the very sounds of strife, and execution punishment, on the processes of autumn, the great Confucian meditates and death. Ouyang Xiu was in his early fifties unravelling when he wrote for this; in aural acuity, a fair match
Confucius who said, "At sixty, my ear was attuned."

"are in the trees." Realizing

Daoist Although iar and compelling, Buddhist revelation. Buddhist

writings sounds

on sound are the most famil could also be an instrument of

in have "Sounds long been used wrote Wang Anshi "the (1021-1086); practices," the gurgling of the water."12 On sighing of the wild wind, to the Stone Gate their famous excursion in the Lu mountains in the year 400, a group of followers of the a miraculous monk (334-416) Huiyuan experienced vision accompanied sounds: by mysterious
As rose and [the apparition] soaring birds beat their wings upwards, out sharply. When trans of gibbons sounded clouds returning a it back, we sensed the arrival of a flying immortal; ported plaintive cries sound reverberated, with the strangeness of mystic tones....

As music

to the Buddha, the witnesses turning thoughts a revelation of the "mystery of the universe experienced and the real nature of things."13 These were uncanny and mystic tones; ordinary, fortu itous sounds could also be the agent of enlightenment. the Sixth Chan Patriarch, was said to (638-713), Huineng have broken free of illusion at the clack of his blade while Their bamboo; Xiangyan chopping Chan master, was enlightened Zhixian (d. 898), another at the sound of a pebble

for the "piping of man"?chiefly wind and string as xiao and the range of vocalizations designated are modes not only translated "whistling")?these (usually of expression, but also of human participation in the deep of nature. In his Prose-Poem onWhistling dynamic (Xiaofu) theWestern Sui describes Jin (265-317) poet Chenggong a noble young whistler, "eccentric in manner, fond of the scornful of the world, oblivious of honor," and strange, versed in the secrets of the Dao. His body is his deeply a instrument, his whistling "perfect natural sound." In its endless permutations it matches those of nature, both to and moving and "effects the harmo them, responding ny of yin and yang": "Emit the zhi note, and at the peak of winter it becomes hot and humid; / Release the yu
note, and severe frost withers things in summer...."16

another link integrating human and cosmic or "rhap of force. A group of early prose-poems systems 33

Music

was

sodies" on panpipes, flutes, mouth organs, and zithers (qin) underscores the intimate rapport between these instruments and the natural world, one which extends to the very wood of their bodies and the wildernesses where bamboo and trees matured.17 In his Prose-Poem on the Qin (Qinfu) Xi (223?262), a great master of the instrument, wrote Kang that the qin should be made from wood gathered in high, mountain vast, and craggy settings; musically inspired by these places, the seeker will choose well.18 Expert playing, in turn, evokes natural settings and transports the listener to them. As the legendary qin master BoYa played, his sympa thetic listener found his mind filled with images of great mountains and rivers.19 A famous poem by Li Bo (701-762) describes the playing of a friend:
As he moves his hands for me in ten thousand valleys....20 It's like hearing the pines

his but sounds, argument mechanically produced revolves around the idea that the material throughout world itself in sound and can be understood expresses through listening. is remarkable for its close technical Songs analysis his general scientific however, observation; assumptions, can be traced much further back. They are apparent in the thought of the Song thinker Zhang Zai (1020?1077), who wrote that "sounds are made by the rubbing (or friction) of qi and of things (xing, things that have form) "This rub thunder; of things bing can be of qi against qi, as with and of qi against against one another, as with drumbeats; things, as with flutes and voices.25 This sonic expression of to be intrinsic and movement and action was understood same dynamic could be ascribed to inevitable. Indeed, the human "sounding (768-824) describes the speech; that is how HanYu to forth" of man and nature in his "Preface
is not but will but will no in a state of equilibrium will the wind cry forth when forth when if struck will the wind sound sound forth. Trees have

Or,

as Ouyang
music

Xiu

wrote:
boulders cleft asunder or wind from sheer cliffs, springs and rainstorms arriving

The

resembles

SeeingMeng Jiao Off" (803):

Whatever no sound sound have sound stirs them; water has no roils it.... Metal and stone with his gift of

forth from high mountains, flowing in the dead of night....21

sympathy or concinnity another side to it: like whistling, happen in the natural world. This

of music music

and nature

had things As

could make

speech

sound, yet is the same.

forth. Man

In high antiquity, the Scarlet Emperor Yan brought rule to the world. and accumulated.The and the yang qi collected There were great winds, came to diverse and nothing myriad things spread and dissipated, se zither fruition. As a result, his minister Shi Da created the five-string in order to bring forth the yin qi and setde the crowds of living things.22

"the push and pull of the four seasons" sing, the flow of history and human affairs "sound forth" in speech and poetry.26 In Chinese thought about nature, in other a great deal, and in its big project matters

make nature causes man to

In other words, the sounds of wind and music both reveal and affect natural processes and transformations. in nature and repli Xi Kang s view that music originates asRonald cates natural harmonies, Egan has observed, con an earlier Confucian trasts both with with preoccupation its social and ritual roles and with the later emphasis on its
expression of human sentiments. In later times?especial

sound words, of describing has recognized the nature, Chinese landscape painting of sound. Figures in the act of listening are importance one of the ways to signal its presence.

LISTENING LOOKS
does a listening figure look like? The physical pos What or tures and attitudes of listening are ambiguous. Looking and touching have their familiar, gazing, tasting, sniffing, more or less recognizable guises. But there is no distinctive of listening. The dilemma of representing it physiognomy can be illustrated by scenes in the Night Entertainment of ? tenth-century in Han Xizai, handscroll composition Beijing. The subject of this scroll is a lavish and sensuous at the home of aminister of the Southern Tang gathering state (937-975).2? Along with food, drink, and amorous music dalliance, (worldly music, in this case) figures impor scenes the evenings Successive diversions. tantly among show people playing flutes, drums, stringed instruments, section Han Xizai and clappers. In the opening and a women are listening as a musician group of guests and on a pipa (Fig. 5). She is an outstanding performs for them of her audience. One artist, to judge by the response in the group?is sole philistine guest?the glancing at his a music-induced seems rapt in host; another powerful reverie. All the others, men and women alike, fix their eyes

came to be music ly from the Song dynasty on?qin in terms of human emotions, sensibil understood largely and states of mind. Partly as a result of Xi Kang s con ities, the idea of music as natural har tinuing prestige, however,
mony, "neither sorrow nor gladness," was never really sup

a superior player is deeply planted.23 And of course, since so too is qin music. This idea attuned to the natural world, the qin is the later pictorial tradition, in which pervades and almost invariably shown being played out-of-doors, on country their often bring very outings gentlemen
instruments along.

movement and transformation in which ways was also the subject of sci in sound manifest themselves entific scrutiny. Qi sheng, "The sound of qi," is the title of a section in the treatise Lun qi ("On 41',"preface 1637) The the by 1665).24 duction scientist (1587-ca. Song Yingxing scholarly Song proceeds through an analysis of the pro the interaction of various of sound through in a matrix is mainly with of qi. His concern pressures 34

'
Fig. 5. Gu Hongzhong From: Zhongguo (act. 943-960), lidai huihua section (Beijing: of Night Renmin Entertainment shuju,

;J!V^^9^
of Han Xizai. vol. 1. Handscroll;

II
ink and color

I ^F
on

*
x 335.5 cm. Palace Museum,

silk; 28.7

Beijing.

1978-91),

Fig. 7. Gu Hongzhong, Xizai looking.

detail

o? Night

Entertainment

of Han

Xizai:

Han

Fig. 6. Gu Hongzhong, Xizai listening.

detail

of Night

Entertainment

of Han

Xizai:

Han

their poses are quiet but alert, not fully relaxed, stiffened with attention. slightly They are looking directly at the source of the sound, as at the performer listeners characteristically do. Looking with the act of facing the sound, of course; moreover goes the source of a sound is often interesting visually, like this musician if the woman were practicing her art. But what a beauty walking across the room? There is such a simply scene further on in the scroll, where Han Xizai sits watch ing a woman approach him, her hands full of flutes and a arc as she exchanges her body turned in a charming pipa, a word with a maidservant carrying a tray. Han s face in the two scenes is virtually identical (Figs. 6, 7). In both, his has an intensity of focus that seems to bring expression more than one sense to bear on its object; in the eroticized environment of his "night entertainment," lust may be the

on her;

word

for it. In any case, we can distinguish between his lis or sce tening and his looking only by the nature?sonic nic?of the object in front of him. The meaning of the aural gaze is highly ambiguous in the silence of the pictorial world. In the Night Entertainment a listener of the the musical is what makes performance no unambiguous in paintings with But pictured figure. pipa-like source of sound, such as a landscape painting, the of the listening look is much more elusive. In sounds of nature do not have a clearly localized general the and diffuse; a point of origin, and are likely to be mingled fixed gaze is not a clear pointer to them. And of course the in which those sounds take place? settings or matrices trees tossing in the wind, falling and rippling water?are, like amusician, often picturesque; that is, they are interest at. So the gazer in the picture, worth ing visually, looking 35

meaning

of the picture, may seem to be appreciating eyes alone. to convey artists looked for other ways Resourceful to an anecdote the idea of listening. According recount ed by Hong Mai in the when (i 123-1202), painters court were chal twelfth-century painting academy to the sound of water, lenged to portray a man listening like the viewer the scene with most a of the contestants drew seated figures facing stream. This conception, as a listening ambiguous image, was outmatched the sound entry, where by the winning source was ingeniously placed out of the listener's range of vision:
One time in the Academy the students were assigned this text as a topic: a stony In the sixth month, with bramble staff, going along path, stream. to a flowing Noontime shade everywhere, listening a tall tree next to a clear stream, with a traveller Everyone painted a big the water. Only there was one painter who made sitting facing about a mountain grove and a steep ravine, rocks scattered path, and a figure in a spot where the shade of the trees was deep inclining his ear to listen. The stream, though, was at the base of the mountain, to capture where he could not see it?an the idea of elegant way "listening to a flowing stream." It took first place.

pictured figure s attitude shows the stream to be the focus of his interest; since it's not visible from where he indeed. sits, he can only be listening to it. Elegant, Li Gonglin found another solution in his Lingling Gorge, where the figures do not gaze straight ahead at the object of their interest like Han Xizai. Instead, bodies and faces turning, their poses express a kind of distractedness (Fig. 3). In particular, the stance of the figure high on the ledge to to turn the left of the waterfall?interrupting his walk The sharply toward it, reversing the direction of his attention? a response to some stimulus from a new clearly mimes direction. Whatever has caused him to look around must have been heard rather than seen.With his back to us, his the eyes are not in view, and this further marginalizes the pose is predicated on a kind question of sight?indeed, of competition between the claims of sight and hearing. It is as expressive an attitude, in fact, as cupping an ear, and
much more natural.

The abruptly turning figure seen from the rear?often a recognizable by a falls or rapid stream?is listening type, to be found in a number of later paintings as well. Among these are two paintings from a set of late Song hanging scrolls representing four In the seasonal landscapes. "Winter Scene" a solitary walker, his back to us, turns to as it drops into a gorge at his look at a torrential waterfall feet in the more similar figure dramatic (Fig. 8). A on a bridge through a mountain "Summer Scene" pauses gorge in a terrific blast of wind (Fig. 9). His robe and scarf forward as he turns in the direction of the wind, whip a vine-hung while thrashes in the stormy pine overhead air. His attention has certainly been claimed not only by the sight of flying mists and spume, but also by the explo

Scene. Hanging scroll; Song period, Winter Fig. 8. Anonymous, From: Sd~Gen color on silk; 128.2 x 55.2 cm. Konchi-in, Kyoto. tsu (Osaka: Osaka Municipal Museum of Art, 1980), cpl. 52.

ink and no biju

36

sive rattling and roaring of the wind.29 "Summer Scene" is one of the noisiest of Chinese paintings, though I don't think this has been remarked upon. in Chinese The only picture art, as a matter of fact, in which the activity of listening has been widely recog is a hanging nized and discussed scroll by the court th c.) in the National painter Ma Lin (act. early to mid-13 in Taipei.The Palace Museum title Quietly Listening to the in the Pines (Jingting songfeng) was inscribed on the Wind it was scroll by Ma's patron Emperor Lizong, and below a palace seal of 1246 (Fig. 10).30 In a colophon stamped in the eighteenth century, the Qianlong emperor that the quiet listener must be Tao Hongjing proposed a great early practitioner of alchemy, breath (456-536), and other Daoist and immortali ing exercises, longevity arts.31 Tao was also adept at wind-listening, and had a ty of pines planted on his property the better to study grove an secrets. As we have it from Lu You (1125-1210), wind's added immortality-seeking, dream-voyaging tion before Ma Lin's:
The arts of planting down; Trying [But] Just a hand I've received listen state!32 at alchemy Master is even more Tao swonderful uncertain. secret: reach an immortal's jade and eating herbs

m::

poet
have

of a genera
not been handed

to the pine wind?and

spontaneously

in the picture is such a sage analyzing The wind-listener the sonically expressed of nature. Sitting on the rhythms bent trunk of the vibrating tree with his hand resting light scarf-ties echoing the curve of the ly on it, his blowing vines overhead, his very person is in touch and in align ment with the pine wind. His face is oriented in one direc tion and his glance in another?a variation on the turned in Li Gonglin's heads of the waterfall-listeners Lingling summer and winter and in the anonymous land Gorge are his narrowed which scapes. Particularly eyes striking to evade engagement with any glance sideways, seeming on perceptions in order to concentrate of a nonvi object sual nature. The device also suggests the diffuseness, the non-concrete nature of the object of his attention. A related attitude characterizes the ninth-century Chan as depicted master Xiangyan Zhixian the Southern by of Song artist Liang Kai (act. early 13 th c.) at the moment his enlightenment, which was precipitated sound of a by stalk as he was sweeping pebble whisked against a bamboo the walk pauses, (Fig. 11).33 The scene is frozen: Xiangyan his broom. No electrified, holding bouncing pebble or other source of sound is to be seen. What we see is the contrast between his hunched, dully laboring torso and his turned abruptly in another startled face, mouth open, at once distracted and alert. direction with an expression Trailing a Staff Under the Pine (Songxia yizhang), a fan painting Museum, of Southern Palace Song date in the National in a somewhat attention sound-altered presents

Summer Scene. Hanging scroll; Fig. 9. Anonymous, Song period, color on silk; 118.5 x 52.8 cm. Kuon-ji, From: SJ Gen Kyoto. tsu (Osaka: Osaka Municipal Museum of Art, 1980), cpl. 51.

ink and no biju

37

(Fig. 12).34 The solitary figure is a country sandals and carrying a long staff, a cloth recluse, wearing in his hair. He is walking knotted along a path out of a of bamboo and past a twisted, vine-draped grove pine tree. The waters of a lake in the background are ruffled, different way and his beard, clothes, and scarf-ends, the along with to the left in of the pine and bamboo, are blowing foliage a hard wind. As Xu Guohuang has pointed out, the struc ture of the trunk and branches of the pine tree suggests the frame of the character feng ("wind"), with the man and his walking staff making up the central element in the The tree is the medium is which the wind graph. through as he stands in his around the man perceived; bending bubble of space, the branches make for him a reverberat ing world of sound. Like the man the hermit standing at Lingling Gorge, as if summoned. turns full-face He toward the pauses tilting his head slightly to present his ear to the branches; his face is a fine oval, with firmly drawn features and the slanting eyes and brows of a sage, and his expres sion is that of someone struck with a thought that is just to expand in his mind. The look in his eyes beginning seems grave, abstracted, and completely is private?he to the viewer. Rather oblivious than looking toward the source of the sound, he turns his face away from it, away viewer, in fact, to the picture surface?the from everything, only of the image world where there is nothing for him to part see, thereby suspending his faculty of vision. His expres sion, at once attentive and unseeing, suggests listening, as itwere, by process of elimination. of course, iswhat a fan is for, and that is certain Wind, here; but the image puts the idea ly part of the meaning of wind into a much more complex perspective. The feng is a remarkable conception, inscribed in the composition the material of nature into alignment elements bending with in Chinese the dynamic force represented by wind into alignment with the cosmology?and simultaneously graphic sign for that force. The composition is the inscrip

Fig. io. Ma to theWind silk; 226.6 x

Lin

(act. early-mid in the Pines. Hanging 110.3 cm. National

Quietly scroll; ink and Palace Museum,

13 th c),

Listening color on Taipei.

Fig.

11. Liang

Kai

13th c), "Xiangyan section of Portraits Monks. color Handscroll; on silk; each

(act. early Zhixian," of Eight ink and scene 26.6

x ca. 64 cm. Shanghai Museum. From: Zhongguo meishu quanji: huihua bian, vol. 4, pi. 70.4.

38

Fig. fan; Taipei.

12. Anonymous, ink and color

on

a a Pine. Round Song period, Trailing Staff Under Palace Museum, silk; 24.2 x 25.3 cm. National

tion. On another level, the feng addresses the perceptual them with dilemma of viewers of this image by providing one which, a half-concealed like the meaning of caption; the wind itself, may be grasped only by the qualified seek er. Not all are so qualified. After all, at first look the man is just "trailing a staff under a pine," and to the namer of the fan (and, surely, to many casual viewers) this seemed an adequate description. stances and sidelong glances, like those in the Turning considered above, became Song paintings staples in the exam later repertory of pictured listeners; the following are rep from the Ming (1368?1644), ples, dating period resentative. A figure and setting very similar to those in the "Winter Scene" are seen in Zhang Lu's (ca. 1490?ca. aWaterfall in the Minneapolis 1563) Scholar Contemplating Institute of Arts,35 and a listener with eyes much like Ma in Wu Lin's Wei's appears pine-wind-listener's to a Flute in the C.C.Wang collec (1459-1508) Listening tion in New York (Fig. 13).36 The listener here is seated a flute player and a curling stream; facing one between at the other, hat ribbon blowing in an while glancing attendant breeze, he nature and man?the course, figure's the mingled harmonies of of heaven." The flute, of "piping establishes the presence of sound here, as does the ear. But it is his smile, large, carefully painted savors

13.Wu Wei (i459-1508), Fig. scroll; ink on silk; 168 x 102.5 York.

to a Flute. Hanging Listening cm. C.C. Wang New collection,

as well as senses, that con replete with pleasure of mind a variant of the the experience of listening. And veys in a picture is found listener nonseeing illustrating Ouyang Xiu's Sounds ofAutumn. As a subject of painting, in a shelter, his this text is usually rendered with Ouyang servant boy addressing him from outside under a moon lit sky; the example illustrated here, In an Autumn Garden in the Freer Gallery, is the work of an anonymous six artist (Fig. 14).37 Ouyang Xiu teenth-century professional is reclining on a couch, but he looks wakeful. His posture has an angular tension, all knees and elbows; his eyes are on closed, not to doze, but the better to focus his mind to let us know that more is going listening?and thereby on in the picture than meets the eye. in a painting of 1633 by Chen The pose of the man in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New Hongshou scroll in strong blue-and-green col York, a large hanging ors, suggests the same ideas (Fig. i.5).38 He stands next to a cluster of trees, his face turned and tilted to look up into 39

16th century, In an Autumn Garden. Hanging scroll; Fig. 14.Anonymous, ink and color on paper; of Art, Smithsonian 175 x 94 cm. Freer Gallery D.C. Institution, Washington,

their branches, his glance sharp, his posture stiff with inter est. Is this a listening picture? Something, at any rate, has made him turn, some call to his senses from behind him. The foliage is not ruffled, but in some areas the silhouettes of leaf clusters are repeated in wash suggesting an echoing or vibrating effect, one not typical of Chen's usual man ner. And two broad ribbons of atmosphere?two grand strokes from the brush of qi?flow smoothly, powerfully through the trees and across the distant mountains.39 40

Fig. 15. Chen Hongshou to 1633. Hanging Dated x 77.8 cm. Metropolitan

Man Under a Tree. (1598-1652), scroll; ink and color on silk; 235.6 Museum of Art, New York.

one of these distinctive Encountering listening attitudes in a scene ofTao Yuanming his pine must give the stroking viewer pause. The picture in question, by Li Zai, is a sec in the Liaoning tion of a Returning Home handscroll a collaborative in Shenyang, Provincial Museum under of 1424 by Li and two other early Ming taking profes sional painters (Fig. 16) .4? Like all extant renditions of the it is ultimately derived from Li scene, tree-stroking in the Freer Returning Home scroll (Fig. version Gonglin's turn the episode A number of new details, however, 2). into a listening scene. Tao is attended by a servant carry in the poem. A strong wind?also ing a qin, not mentioned not in the poem?blows past the pine, ruffling his clothes. And instead of gazing into the distance as the text has him do, he has turned his ear to the tree, with a slant-glancing of keen interest much like that of the sagely expression in Ma Lin s Quietly Listening to theWind in wind-listener the Pines.41 to a certain pine on his Tao had a famous attachment a favorite roost for property, grandly evening solitary, its lonely independ birds. He empathized with homing ence it with and associated shelter, companionship, and repose. Sitting, drinking, or strolling near endurance, this tree, as he often wrote of doing, his thoughts would turn to the big questions of mortality and the place of the self in the scheme of things.42 Standing beside a pine tree was among the earliest ways to portray Tao and remained one of the most common; pictures of him stroking his were not just narrative illustrations but cameos of pine human doubts all his rapport with nature. Guo Xi himself?for to have made about the appreciating figure?seems

use of this powerful Tao Yuanming in a land symbolism described by his son Guo Si, which included "an old scape man stroking a great pine in front of him, in an attitude of gazing far into the distance."43 or elsewhere, Tao did not write, in Returning Home or about the wind to the wind, in the about listening All the same, the idea of listening became attached pines. to the image of him and his tree. Itmay even have a place in Li Gonglin's version, where Tao is portrayed with his face turned, the side of his head to the tree?a posture that seems to suggest something more, or other, than the text s is no "raising my head to gaze into the distance." There on a in Li's picture, but the scene?set clear sign of wind an birds, clouds, and open spaces?has among promontory a diffuse ambiance, and the poet's expression suggests airy in which attentiveness and thinking looking, listening, all have a place. It may have been this image that may introduced the idea of pine wind into Tao Yuanming for there is evidence of its spread among Li's iconography, is described as enjoying friends and followers.Tao the pine in a poem that Li's contemporary wind and friend Huang for another of Li's paintings, (1045-1105) wrote Tingjian Under a Pine (Songxia Yuanming) :"the pine wind Yuanming
makes rhythmic music, so his qin needs no playing...."44

And a picture explicitly entitled Yuanming Listening to the in the Pine (Yuanming ting songfeng) was recorded by Wind in his Huaji Deng Chun (Painting [history], continued; pref ace 1167).45 The painter was Qiao Zhongchang (early 12th c), a younger relative and follower of Li Gonglin, and the picture may well have been related to the "stroking the pine" scene in Li's Returning Home scroll, with Tao's listen 41

It is, in any case, ing attitude more explicitly suggested. scene in the fif in Li Zai's pine-stroking entirely explicit exem Home in Liaoning, which teenth-century Returning the extension into the later dynasties of this ampli plifies fied view of Tao's relationship with his pine. we have reviewed here represents a body/face What of listening, which language lays a special emphasis on moments acts of seeing and hearing. of transition between movements and deflected glances enact episodes Swerving to rival claims on the of redirected reactions attention, senses: the sidewise glances of Ma Lin's wind-listener and the Liaoning Tao Yuanming with his pine; the abrupt veer look of the man the abstract, unfocused ing of Xiangyan; in the "Wind" fan; the closed eyes of Ouyang Xiu. It is largely figures through indicate these gestures of their eyes that listening they are not thinking about visible things.

spanning the falls. Both are pausing on their walk, the man to gaze up into the foliage overhead, his servant to look back at the swaying vines. Behind them, rooftops signal a across the bridge ahead of them stand the peopled place; pines, gateway later Chinese
essential.

to the wilderness. painting: here, leaving

It is a familiar the world, of

scenario seeking

in the

The four-line
clear: A The

gateway poem
road

though,

is a channel the

sound. The makes this

accompanying
in front the

picture

rustic

crosses

of pines joins From within this serenity, senses that, in a gush,

sound

of Nuji Mountain sound of water

One

the ear, quietly inclining is born.4 the qi of the Dao

THE VIEWER'S EAR

of the listening paintings discussed above repre Many sent known and episodes?famous listeners or his figures in the human reception toric moments of sound, where of meaning is an event the apprehension through hearing are of note in the biography of a famous person. Many texts having established specific written outside of the picture; often the texts are currency inscribed on or beside the images aswell.The figures' faces are large and distinctive, with clear and carefully painted, associated with expressions. particularized But these are only a fraction of paintings about listening and sound. In most of the listening pictures that prolifer ated during the later dynasties, there is no prominent,
expressive protagonist or recognizable anecdotal under

scene altogether in aural the pictured poem describes terms, and the human presence as a listening one. And the in developing this idea. The composition fully collaborates waterfall crashes down the rocks beneath the among The bridge, massed the man's feet. Above the him, directly under in them clouds of pine needles are almost aworld selves?a world of "pine-sound" (songsheng) .The hollowed a breathy glow of mist is drum-like or mountain cupping trumpet-like, reverberations

of the Zhuangzi's description recalling of jugs, ears, "ten thousand hollows." The servant turning, the scholar leaning figures' postures?the atten back and looking up?are expressive of reoriented to aural perceptions. tion in response Their is listening meant to call attention to the sound, for the mainly is not the figure in the painting but the intended audience viewer of the painting. Viewers of paintings like this, I are asked to identify with the pictured believe, listener, think about the sounds he is hearing, and in some meas ure to imagine and hear them too. can a picture make a listener of its viewer? A pic How ture is a silent thing. The viewer approaches it all eyes? his own sense indeed, perhaps inadvertently suppressing on seeing. Signs of of hearing, the better to concentrate the picture are correspondingly sound within marginal In other words, ized in his attention. the very act of look at a picture entails a certain visual bias, and a funda ing to thinking mental obstacle about or even recognizing in a picture sound and listening is the viewer's default in the encounter with of visuality the visu presumption an interest in aural al image. For the image maker with the pictorial is to overcome that experience, challenge to make contact with the viewer's aural predisposition, in doing so are made patent imagination. The difficulties on Sound of Pines on aMountain by recent commentaries Path that entirely bypass its aural theme.49 The critical seems to be that, since sound is fundamen presumption to the pictorial medium, it is therefore tally extraneous more or less incidental to the meaning of the image as an held image. This view is parallel to widely on the role of visuality in music. Evocations presumptions of visual phe

pinning.
porary

The
private

pictured
citizen,

figure may
or?most

be the artist, a contem

often?no one in partic

ular. Often

in the landscape and is small, ensconced there are also some powerfully only lightly delineated; no painted listener at all. In these aural pictures with he
scenes, hearing is constructed broadly as a sensory experi

or literary rather than as a noteworthy historical moment. The subject is the presence of sound itself, and it is this which the picture asks the viewer to contemplate. Sound of Pines on a Consider (1470-1523) Tang Yin's in Mountain Path (Shanlu songsheng), datable to 1515?1517, in Taipei This National Palace Museum the (Fig. 17)A6 scroll is a grand rocky mountainscape very large hanging on Guo Xi in the Northern tradition, drawing Song ence domi among other models.47 A big bare-faced mountain nates the scene, its sheer flanks rising around a deep a waterfall out its far side, while canyon hollowing drops a series of ridged clefts down to the watery fore through s and the mountain ground. Spreading across the waterfall
waist is a massive canopy of pine branches. A man accom

panied 42

by a boy

carrying

his qin is crossing

a footbridge

in programmatic musical such as compositions at an Exhibition" and Smetana's "Pictures Mussorgsky's are generally or "The Moldau" regarded as curiosities even wonderful, tours de force?interesting, but ultimate to the nature of the medium. The analogy ly extrinsic does not hold, however, in the case of Chinese pictorial in the concept of the integration of sounds art, grounded in visible things. To be sure, none of the visual clues held out by Tang Yin's Sound of Pines on aMountain Path?the plunge of the waterfall and the dense stippling of the foliage, the and positioning of the figures, the shape of the poses its suggestive pocket ofmist, the presence of a mountain, or unmistak instrument?is musical either exclusively a sign of the important presence of sound. All the ably same, they represent a basic repertory of formal devices in nature in for pictorializing the presence of sound as is often the case, their and Qing painting. When, Ming is highlighted and reinforced by the inscribed meaning viewers may be rewarded if they incline texts, careful
their mind's ear.

nomena

the sounds of nature that preoccupied Chief among was that of the wind in the pines?the Chinese painters in Ma Lin's hanging sound that fascinates the figures in the anonymous scroll and "wind" fan (Figs. 10, 12). By in the pines does not make a great deal and large, wind of noise; it is a whisper of nature, one that will escape a with other thoughts or impressions. Hearing mind busy a project of observing it at all, and making it, implies and serenity. One who aspired to sagely disengagement a this state was the painter Xiang (1597-1658), Shengmo a lifelong interest in the lore of wind Ming loyalist with and pines.50 On the model, perhaps, of Tao Hongjing's pine garden, he planted dozens of pines on his property, and named the place "Pine Wind this project Studio"; as early as 1614, when he was still in his teens. began his career testify to his continuing Paintings throughout with the sounds of nature. They include preoccupation to the Sounds ofWinter, a handscroll of 1647 in Listening in the GreatTree of about 1649, Wind Tianjin;51 Wail of the an untitled in Beijing;52 and album leaf of 1649 of aman at a battered old pine, his beard and intently up looking clothes, as well as the surrounding grasses and bamboo, blowing strongly.53 of pine wind illustrate a range of Xiang's paintings to evoke it. Pine Wind and Carefree Immortals ways a handscroll in the of 1628?1629 (Songtao sanxian), Boston Museum is a long composition of Fine Arts, and closing with passages of river and moun opening
tain scenery, where mysterious caverns and reeling per

Fig.

Hanging Museum,

17. Tang Yin (1470-1523), scroll; ink and color on Taipei.

on a Mountain Sound of Pines silk; 194.5 x 102.8 cm. National

Path. Palace

spectives, dream journeys the picture, tion where

now

and remote, near, high speak of or immortals' roamings.54 The heart of is a pine grove in the central por however, a group of companions sit conversationally

now

device: Xiang deploys a distinctive a ribbon-like band of foliage the pine branches form that extends across a stretch of the scene, suggesting the horizontal flow of path of air currents and an ongoing arboreal murmuring (Fig. i#).The Songtao of the title? or "pine literally "pine waves" surges," an expression at the aural dimension of meaning "pine wind"?gets under 43

the trees. Here

Fig. 18. Xiang Boston.

Shengmo

(i 597-1658),

Pine Wind

and Carefree

Immortals.

Section

of a handscroll;

ink on paper;

28.3

x 689.2

cm. Museum

of Fine Arts,

"sound
branches.55

waves"

as well

as the visual

effect

of heaving

Also of particular interest is a leaf Xiang painted in 1629 in Beijing, for a collaborative album, now illustrating is no figure in this poems byWang Wei (Fig. i9).56There scene to enact listening for the viewer, who is invited the brook, eddying around some pro instead to observe

it curves, flowing on across the fore rocks where around a grove of pines. A puff of mist hovers low ground around the trees, filling the space under the branches with the glow of sound?the sound of the pine wind, as Xiang says in his inscription: "The sound of the wind blowing ceaselessly through the seven pines above my studio was a great help in inspiring my brush." Pine Wind and Carefree Immortal (Songtao sanxian), a late truding pictures painting of 1652 in the Jilin Provincial Museum, as a classic pine-wind-listening recluse on the Xiang model of Tao Hongjing the (Fig. 20).57 Xiang painted setting and Xie Bin (b. 1602), a portrait specialist with sometimes whom did the figure. A collaborated, Xiang in a clearing in a pine rustic recluse?it isXiang?pauses his head tilted up, his grove; his clothes are windblown, attentive and alert. The expression inscription long that these pines are the survivors of the large explains In their midst, he grove he had planted long before.
writes, The wind s shushu wailing day the sound tugs at the green twigs of the gusts rises to the

and Night wood... A cup oft Ears filled

cottage

in the

in the frost refilled, drunk alone sousou with the wind's soughing gusts of wind?not in their midst a common

as if the pillow dream!

were

flowing/gushing, now Now pine, Iwill grow old Strolling

to and fro, content.

The
leaf 16 from Wang Wei's Poetic (1597?1658), Shengmo Fig. 19. Xiang to 1629. Collaborative Ideas. Dated album, ink on paper; 28 x 29.7 cm. E. Lee, From: Howard and Sherman Palace Museum, Rogers Beijing. Masterworks Pa.: and Qing Painting from ofMing Arts Council, International 1989), no. the Forbidden 31. City (Lansdale,

tell the viewer about the inscription does not merely the feng in the Song fan (Fig. 12), it gives pine wind?like it a pictorial form. Prominently placed over the figure's head and between the two major trees, it seems on the one hand a crystallization of his thoughts, on the other the vibrations of the air among the branches.

44

There are any number of Ming and Qing paintings of pine wind (songfeng), most with an appreciative figure who trees arrayed in patterns? is implicitly listening and with set in even or syncopated designs, ongoing bands of trunks sonori massed foliage?suggesting rhythmic or wave-like In many is a qin; sometimes it is being played, ties. there even when is meaningful idle across the but its presence or bundled a servant's arms (as inTang Yin's Sound in knees as in Xiang Path, Fig. 17). And of Pines on a Mountain in these sound Shengmo's Carefree Immortal, the pine in one way or is characteristically associated paintings another with and supra airy thoughts of transcendence In just one example out of many, Du mundane harmonies. Jin (act. ca. 1465?ca. 1509) painted aman walking through a grove of pines, his head tilted to look up into their branches (Fig. 21), rather like the man in Tang Yin's paint ing. Dus poem is inscribed on the painting:
The A color of pines tints my clothing green, carries off my thoughts light breeze are palaces? In the mountains Immortals will surely be coming by.5

Sound and listening as part of the global awareness of nature was a favorite subject of sixteenth-century painters such asWen Pine groves and (1470-1559). Zhengming stream-bordered ledges are frequent settings for his atten tive listeners, sometimes with a qin in their laps or close at them fill their ears hand, while waterfalls directly behind In Pine Ravine and Flying Waterfall (Songhe and thoughts. in Taipei, listeners are scattered along the banks of feiquan) a stream; one, seated on a ledge high above facing amoun tain waterfall, is framed by two strands of the cataract's course. Most are standing by themselves, divided seeming black hollow framing the ly alone with their thoughts.The its echoes, and the patterned falls amplifies band of pine trunks and branches extending from side to side matches In his inscription, Wen the idea of temporal rhythms. writes of his love for "ancient pines and waterfalls" and his efforts, over a five-year period from 1527 to 1531, to paint this picture for his friend and student Wang Chong (Wang is no easy pursuit. How it resists comple Liji). "Painting tion!" he exclaims. Not easy, indeed, painting for the ear: a long struggle can Imake Liji appreci "Only after such ate the tones/sounds [shangyin]."S9 Wen's Strumming the Qin in the Shade of Pines Similarly, in (Songyin long qin), a qin player sits in a grove of trees at the 45

A palace is to be seen in a notch in the mountains; and the some in salutation, as if greeting man's arms are joined unseen presence in the pine branches.

their zigzagging branches vibrating with the composition, size of this painting?over eleven energy. The magisterial and import to the scene. In a feet high?lends grandeur A Sounding poem he inscribed on another composition, Qin in a Secluded Valley (Youhe ming qin; 1548),Wen speaks mind" and of of the waterfall cleansing the "illusion-filled "the pine wind's ancient songs" which he answers with his a scroll by Shen qin.61 A similar duet is evoked in hanging in the Green. Shen Hao 1661), Pine Wind (1585-after inscribed it with a poem:
Shushu D D The Sends the pine wind blows, sounds out. the waterfall of our the qin amid the greenery far away.

sound

thoughts

The

sit by a lake, facing one player and his companion another, attended by two boys. To the right stand six pine trunks straight and trees, bases in a syncopated formation, side to side in a and branches spreading evenly spaced, the figures, a waterfall unified mass. Behind drops from a look. the cliffs that frame it have a shuddering high peak; and varied areas of pattern are full of resonance These the tilted oval of clear ground around the vibration, while two men is a space of receptivity and attention. Besides the wind,

is the other great the sound of water to the attentive offered by nature experience auditory are likely to dwell as to water listener; textual allusions on its sounds as on its appearance. much "Taking pleas in water," in the picture criticized (and by Guo Xi an aural act. in the one praised by Hong Mai), was are likely to be found at waterside, often bend Listeners over in unmistakably streambeds ing appreciatively was very fond attitudes;Wen Zhengming water-listening of this motif.63 is Listening to A highly focused water-listening painting a scroll Waterfall by a Rocky Cliff (Shiyai tingquan), a hanging in the Princeton Art Museum by Zhang Feng (d. 1662), a of Xiang contemporary (Fig. 23).6* The figure Shengmo as intently as Xiang's to water here is listening figures attend to the wind, and the landscape is similarly framed to pictorialize his sensory experiences. Seated on a ledge with amountain rising behind in layer upon layer of stony over the waterfall ledges and pillars, he leans forward down over the rocks below him. The canyon is bounding and hard, the setting seems a filled with mist. Smooth landscape of drums, chimes, and organ pipes, booming with echoes and reverberations. A sprinkling of ink dots above the falls suggests not really foliage, still less hovering of water, but rather a kind of sonic haze. The droplets inscribed poem, which speaks of "bending down to hear water" and "the call of a yellow bird [piercing] ten rushing to an aural steers the viewer thousand layers of mist," of the scene. Zhang painted other auditory apprehension scenes aswell?like Xiang Shengmo, he seems to have had a special interest in sounds, in his case perhaps particular ure

ca. 1465-ca. 1509), Landscape with Figures. Hanging Fig. 2i. Du Jin (act. collection, scroll; ink on silk; 153.7 x 79 cm.Yabumoto Japan. From: Painters of the Great Ming: Tlie Imperial Court and the Richard Barnhart, of Art, Zhe School (Dallas: Dallas Museum 1993), cat. 87.

his instrument silent on his lap, he has foot of amountain; a thoughtful, look (Fig. 22).6o The setting is very listening like that in Pine Ravine and Flying Waterfall, with a much the fig in a dark gorge streaking down behind waterfall into a stream that curls around the place ure, debouching where he is sitting. The pine trees again form a band across 46

* *. 3

?t. M?

ti

Hanging Princeton

a to a Waterfall Fig. 23. Zhang Feng (d. 1662), Listening by Rocky Cliff. scroll; ink on paper; 94.3 x 40.9 cm. The Art Museum, L. Elliott. Gift of Mrs. Edward University.

**&
Fig. 22. Wen Zhengming scroll; ink on paper; 351 x the Qin (1470-1559), Strumming Museum 105.3 cm- Metropolitan in the Shade of Art, New of Pines. York. Hanging

47

ly the sound of water. One of the leaves from his album of Museum of Art in New York is 1644 in the Metropolitan I seemed to hear the inscribed: "...I was in a place where sound of a mountain torrent...." Sonically framed by two trees as he walks up a slope that parallels the trajectory of the rapids, the figure in the scene?not particular visual stimulus?seems caught
awareness.65

reacting to any in a moment of

sonorousness of painted scenes like these planned the art of the garden designer. The planting of parallels the practice of pine groves for wind-listening exemplified natural sounds into the landscape of the ideal building were artfully laid out for the same retreat. Watercourses The Li Gefei's purpose. (d. 1106) description notable gardens in Luoyang mentions many
clear stream in a narrow channel whose

of

nineteen such spots: a

was

murmuring

'.-s^*^*

f^i

-e*1

the garden; a brook and throughout sobbing over shallows; and a waterfall over sub swishing frothing rocks with a roar that could be heard several tens merged of// off. Li writes of sitting in a nearby pavilion on awin ter night to the sound of this waterfall until listening as if the clear iciness were "after a while, feeling taking over my very flesh and bones, I could stay no longer and audible
left."66

Inmany of the pictures discussed above, listening figures are positioned a frame of trees or under a neatly within canopy of their branches. A stage set of pines like those in is a recognizable device for Xiang Shengmo's paintings suggesting mind. The
sonic

on the sound of pine wind impinging of space it defines holds the potential of pocket the
Tree frames are also sometimes used

reverberations.

tf#r

to reinforce the presence of other kinds of sound: in pic tures of flute playing, whistling, and listening to the rain ca. 1330-ca. Mou (act. 1369) and Dai Jin by Sheng the figure in each case is placed under the (1388-1462), arched branches of a tree (Fig. 24).6j Figures under or next to trees, of course, are ubiquitous in Chinese painting, and no means all of them are fixated on sound. What the by tree frames is the idea of the human mind open to nature: sensual and perceptual listening as part of a generalized awareness which also draws on sight, skin sensations, and and smell; on memory, knowledge, cognition, feeling,
desire.

The place of listening, defined in this way as ametaphor can now be for philosophical attention and attunement, as Shen Zhou's in such paintings great and recognized much discussed hanging scroll The Grandeur ofMount Lu (Lushan gao) in Taipei, painted in 1467 as a gift for Shen's friend and mentor Chen Kuan on the occasion of Chen's -*&.

*>m

to the Rain. Hanging scroll; ink Listening Fig. 24. Dai Jin (1388-1462), From: and color on silk; 114.4 x 66 cm. Private collection, Tokyo. Suiboku bijutsu taikei, vol. 2, cpl. 19.

(Fig. 25). The long poem with which birthday on a famous text ismodelled inscribed the painting Xiu with the same title, addressed to a friend, by Ouyang at Mount Liu Ningzhi, who made his retirement Lu. As Shen Shen Zhou's inscription explains, Chen Kuan's ancestral

seventieth

48

The Grandeur (1427-1509), ofMount Fig. 25. Shen Zhou to 1467. Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper; 84.8 Palace Museum, National Taipei.

Lu. Dated x 21.8 cm.

26. Fig. Mountain 102.5

1642-1707), (Shitao; Daoji and Water. Hanging scroll; x 42.4 cm. Shanghai Museum.

Pure ink

Tones on paper;

of

his family Lu region. Though home was in the Mount in the Yuan period, "he still senses a silent moved away the spirit of Lu, nor is a thousand // too far for bond with it to unite with him."68 The mountain represents appro in this for longevity, strengthened priate birthday wishes case by an auspicious personal connection, and its dynam the main theme of the ic efficacy may be considered It rises in a squirming, animated mass of dense frag image. ments and layers, as if the entire Lu range had been

into one surging, throbbing body. and compacted small figure this stupendous Against backdrop, Chen's on a ledge in the foreground, head raised, arms appears folded and sleeved across his chest, solemn and serene?a Shen Zhou's itself to which tiny replica of the mountain text compares him: "so complete is his eminence that Lu crushed [itself] is not his superior." Chen Kuan has his shoulder and his regard is not directed at it? toward the mountain, after all, it is a thousand // off. He seems rather to be con 49

centrating

his

attention

on

its numinous

emanations

from

afar, in an attitude
awareness.

of generalized

sensory

and cognitive listening resonant painter Tones of

Pines, water, dynamic landscape surfaces, and come together in a particularly rich and figures the remarkable sound picture by early Qing This is Pure (or Shitao; 1642?1707). Daoji Mountain and Water (Shanshui qingyin), a large

of figures in telling juxtaposi in nature around them, and the to evoke of the forms of nature themselves manipulation sonic sensations or ideas in the viewer's own mind and were the image maker's means for addressing body?these and bodies, the positioning tion with resonant things the subject of sound in nature. The feng-shaped pine in the "Wind" (Fig. 12) fan represents amost unusual use of this the wind has actually labelled itself. In other device, where land forms are shaped like musical instruments, examples, or sheathed in textures that vibrate or sizzle.Water drops through dark echoing clefts, spurts and bounds at the foot of a falls, flows in lilting curves, or releases a tonal spray. Trees are arrayed in rhythmic patterns, or spread their in extended branches "waves." The visual blankness of mists may seem to harbor aural sensations?like the closed or unfocused eyes of a listener. These ways of representing to be its lis sound in landscape ask the painting's viewer tener as well?an the way, in keeping with approach, by Guo Xi's views on painting the enjoyment of nature. Guo Xi dismisses both with equal distaste, Although a picture a vividly within less listening figure is probably than a gazing one. The latter may be said to dispensable in the act of view the viewer of the painting are partners in visuality.The listener, on the other ing; they beckons the viewer out of his viewing into another hand, accompany
sensory zone?a zone, in the Chinese construction of

hanging scroll in Shanghai (Fig. 2o).69 Two companionable figures sit on the porch of a cottage built on stilts over a water fall. Their but they do not eyes are closed and unseeing, have the tense, lessoned air of Ouyang Xiu taking in the are fully sounds of autumn. Their relaxed, postures

immersed, entranced; they appear to have entered into a state of rapt harmony with their surroundings. The waterfall down the mountain crashes just below roaring them, and the arching pine in front twists sinuously as if In fact, the whole in motion. reverberates landscape contours with and vibrating dots, throughout throbbing the "pure tones" of the piping of the earth.70 As this and other images suggest, in the end it is not sounds many but the flow of qi that matters. Though listening was a it had classic mode of tuning in to these forces, ultimately to be a quality of attention that went beyond any partic
ular sense.

CONCLUSION
Pictures of the sonic vibrations of the landscape, like of its masses and pictures of the physical configurations its li, or fun hollows, are ventures at coming to grips with to and inscriptions damental alluding principles. Titles of listening faces sound and listening, the representation

no less privileged than that nature, of access to knowledge course real hearing is the business of the of sight. And of was mind's admonition ear, not the body's. Zhuangzi's above: "Don't listen with your ears, listen with quoted your mind. your experience No, spirit." To don't listen with your mind, listen with in aural interested this, the image maker add: Listen with your eyes. might

50

Characters

OuyangXiu qi #1

8fc*#

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Bo Ya

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&Wt

f?%

& Chen Hongshou ?fc it Chen Kuan ?fc )t Chenggong Sui ? ^ ^ Dai Jin ?c*4 Daoji i?^
Deng Chun fp# t?%

qin % Qinfu ^A Qiusheng fu it $ ?

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Mengjiao ??p

Zhuangzi

51

Notes
i. Yu leibian (Beijing: Zhongguo hualun ed., Zhongguo gu Jianhua, trace remains of Bo Juyi's painting. dian yishu, 1957), vol. 1, p. 637. No is pre and influential villa handscroll famous Wang Wei's Wangchuan Wei], see Kohara in numerous O, O I [Wang copies; for a selection, in Bunjinga suihen, ed. Iriya Yoshitaka (Tokyo: Ch??k?ronsha, 1975), vol. 1. C. Anne Ronald thanks to Richard Burkus-Chasson, Barnhart, My in the the participants Ellen Murck, Laing, Alfreda Egan, Johnston served of Michigan in the for Center participants study group project. 2. For Indiana for Chinese Studies faculty seminar, and and Religion Chinese University Thought this and suggestions that helped me with et al., Fong, James C.Y. Watt, Palace Museum, theNational Taipei (New of Art, 1996), pi. 60. D.C.: Chinese Figure Painting (Washington, seeWen

fran?aise d'extr?me-orient, 1985), Jullien, La Valeur allusive (Paris: Ecole "La Lyre ou le vent: une interpretation du lyrisme propre ? la tradition chinoise," pp. 91-121. 10. See Kenneth A Song for One or Two: Music and the J. DeWoskin, in Early China for Chinese Studies, (Ann Arbor: Center Concept ofArt of Michigan, and the Mind" 1982), chap. 3, "Music, Hearing, University (pp. 29-39). 11. From sect. 4, "In Chuang Ho's the world of men"; Zhuangzi ji shi, vol. 1, scroll

University

references

of color and sound imagery in poetry in "The of 'Picture-like' Literary Concepts (Ju-hud) and in the Relationship 'Picture-Idea' between and (Hua-i) Poetry in Words and Images: Chinese and Painting, Poetry, Calligraphy, Painting," C. Fong Museum ed. Alfreda Murck andWen (New York: Metropolitan is cited there. 1991), pp. 3 67-71. Wang's couplet and ChenYuankai, lidai youji xuanyi 13. Ping Huishan eds., Lushan is on annotations.The 1981), pp. 9-15, with portion quoted (Nanchang, case for Huiyuan's of the Stone Gate 10; a persuasive p. authorship of Art, Preface with ismade Richard on pp. Strassberg's in consultation translation was made 12-13. My in Inscribed Landscapes: Travel Writing from

2, p. 147 (Watson, 12. See Wai-kam

Tzu, p. 54). of the discussion

a color

Possessing York: Metropolitan 3. See Thomas Smithsonian lin and Long

reproduction, the Past: Treasures from Museum Lawton,

Institution, Handscroll

"Li Kung Brotherton, 1973), no. 4; Elizabeth Illustrations of T'ao Ch'ien's Returning Home" University, 1992). Brotherton dates Li's compo

(Ph.D. diss., Princeton sition to the io8os. 4. Tao Shanghai: translation Clarendon this Rocks, Art, vol. scene Shu

Zhonghua

ed., Jingjie ji (Sibu beiyao ed.; xiansheng the vols. 5.6a-8b; from 1733-36): The Poetry ofTao Ch'ien (Oxford: by James R. Hightower, recent For an interesting Press, 1970), pp. 268-70. study of see Martin "Garden from another J. Powers, perspective, (1778-1839), shuju, 1927-36, and Freedom: 1 (Spring Tao Yuanming Comes Home," Oriental

See of California Pr., 1994), pp. 70-71. (Berkeley: Univ. Imperial China on Painting and the also Susan Bush, "Tsung Ping's Essay Landscape Buddhism' of Mount and Christian Murck, Lu," in Bush 'Landscape Princeton Univ. eds., Theories Pr., 1983), (Princeton: of theArts in China pp. at Night: Power of Quiet Shen Zhou's (1427-1509) Sitting Monumenta For a good S?rica, vol. 43 (1995), pp. 381-403. Night Vigil," see Possessing of the painting, the Past, pi. 189. reproduction see A.C. Graham in Cyril Birch, 15. For translations, ed., Anthology to the Fourteenth Literature from Early Times (New Century of Chinese C. Egan, The Literary Works and Ronald York: Grove, 1965), pp. 368-69; Univ. Pr., 1984), pp. 127-29. (Cambridge: Cambridge of Ou-yang Hsiu trans. David 16. Xiao Tong, Wen xuan: Selections of Refined Literature, R. (Princeton: Knechtges 17. See the translations Princeton Univ. by Knechtges, Pr., 1996), vol. Wen xuan, vol. 3, pp. 315-23. 3, pp. 233-43, 149-52. 14. "The

1998), pp. 28-38. see Robert E. Harrist, and Private this composition, 5. On Painting in Eleventh-Century China: Mountain Villa by Li Gonglin (Princeton: Life Villa Princeton Univ. shows that Li painted Mountain Pr., 1998). Harrist 1086 and 1093. between 6. See Harrist,

Fractals, 44, no.

and Private Life, pp. 39-40 and, for a detail of Painting is Harrist translation the turning s,with gu here ren 17. The figure, pi. the scenery depicted. instead of "valley," in keeping with dered "gorge" Thatched Hut of the same features appear in Lu Hong's (Caotang), Many a composition which see in particular the have originated may scenes of streamside around nature Li Gonglin's lovers reproduced time; in

and Private Life, pi. 15.6-8. Painting sect. 2, "On making all things equal," Zhuangzi 7. From ji shi, Guo ed., 4 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961, 1982), vol. 1, scroll Qingfan trans., Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings 2, pp. 45-46; Burton Watson, (New Univ. York: Columbia Pr., 1964), pp. 31-32. 8. See Wen Fong, Past, pp. 120-37, for 9. See Shigehisa of the Development and Power in China, "Monumental color illustrations in Possessing the Painting," Landscape of both paintings. and discussions of Winds and the "The Imagination

liter in Knechtges, Wen xuan, vol. 3. pp. 279-302.The A Song for One or Two; and, for the qin is vast: see DeWoskin, over an excellent recent C. Egan, "The Controversy study, Ronald in of the Qin Music and 'Sadness' and the Changing Conceptions Middle Period Studies, vol. 57, no. 1 China," Harvard Journal of Asiatic ature on of Han and later texts; a ver or Two, p. 105. Song for One 20. "Listening to Monk the qin" in Ma Shu playing Jun from Sichuan cisu, dacidian, 3 vols. ed., Tangshi fenlei Dongtian, (Chengdu: on the selection of Tang poems 1992), vol. 1, p. 1293. For an extensive in a number A qin, see pp. 1290-13 04 of this anthology. 21. Quoted in Egan, "The Controversy to human the music goes on to compare to the "sounds A art of Yu-ho handed down universal from Confucius." to the Tseng over Music," p. 63. Ouyang and and animal sounds as well, and Shun, King Wen, Emperor is sometimes ascribed power see in translation, of passages to her Chinese Calligraphy (June 1997), pp. 5-66. is found anecdote 19. The in DeWoskin, sion is translated

259-314. 18. Translated

Kuriyama, in Body, Subject, of the Body," Chinese Conception of Zito ed. Angela andTani Barlow (Chicago: Univ. on the connection between wind and the com and For an interesting in early writing. on of air?breath the movements

Pr., 1994), pp. 23-41, Chicago as revealed order of the world parison, wind?in see M.H. western Abrams

serve as material of Romantic poetry; symbols they to human emotions and conditions, states, corresponding psychological Breeze: Essays on them (The Correspondent whether causing or reflecting title essay). Romanticism Norton, 1984], [NewYork: English defined is also a central Wind (ca. concept, by Liu Xie literary 465~ca.52o) of correlate in Wenxin emotion and the diaolong as "a source of transformation, and vitality" Shih, trans., (see Vincent Yu-chung and the Carving 1970], [Taipei: Zhonghua, of Dragons discussion in literary theory, see also Lin Wen-y?eh's in Vitality of Eeng-ku,' to T}ang, ed. Shuen-fu Univ. Pr., 1986), pp. of the Lyric Voice: Lin and Stephen 130-66; and Fran?ois

evocative similarly for a selection calligraphy; Ecke's "Introduction"

Museum of Art, 1971). Philadelphia ca. the L?shi chunqiu (Spring and autumn annals ofMr. L?; A Song for One or Two, p. 56 (roman in DeWoskin, 239 BCE), quoted are also given. other examples ization converted here to pinyin), where over Music." 23. See Egan, "The Controversy (Philadelphia: 22. From renmin, 24. See Yeyi, lun qi, tan tian, silian shi (Shanghai: Shanghai I am relying on the work of Christopher Cullen, 1976), pp. 64-79. Here in Seventeenth-century China: Interface "The Science/Technology on qi and the wu xing" Bulletin of the School of Oriental SongYingxing In an essay on and African Studies, vol. 53, no. 2 (1990), pp. 295-318. in China, vol. et al., Science and Civilization in Joseph Needham acoustics

The Literary Mind p. 227). On wind in "The Shih Owen Decline Poetry from (Princeton:

and Revival the Late Han Princeton

52

Univ. Robinson 4, pt. i (Cambridge: Pr., 1962), Kenneth Cambridge nature of sound in the Chinese also examines qi and the "pneumatic" esp. pp. 134-41). (pp. 126-228, understanding 25. Zhang Zaiji (Taipei: Zhonghua shuju, 1978), p. 20. For a study of Zhang, see (Cambridge: 26. From (Princeton: 27. For Ira E. Kasoff, Tsai The Thought of Chang (1020-1077) Univ. Pr., 1984). Cambridge Charles Han Y? and the T'ang Search for Unity Hartman, Princeton a color Univ. Pr., reproduction, (Beijing: Renmin to Gu 1985), pp. 230-33. see Zhongguo shuju, lidai huihua: vol. Gugong 1, pp. 84-93. but generally

each accompanied monks, his biography). Liang Kai's boo, another Tan Xiyong, episode "Liang Kai

by a transcription famous painting

of a relevant of Huineng

sound-enlightenment, tu juan" (Yishu jia 9.2 ji Ba gaoseng gushi scroll may be a copy or a later work. For a trans [1978]), pp. 50-58.The see Lu Kuanyu lation of Xiangyan's and (Charles Luk), Ch'an biography, Zen Teaching, vol. 1 (London: Rider, i960), pp. 129-33. has a spurious of Xu Daoning 34. The fan, which (ca. signature in color in Songdai shuhua ceye mingpin 1050), is reproduced Palace (Famous Album Leaves of the Song Dynasty; Taipei: National on pp. 272-73. It is possible that this Museum, 1995), pi. 42, discussed to be Tao Hongjing. is meant Tao is shown full-face, figure similarly a pronounced with slant to his eyes, in some later images such as the 970-ca. tezhan Zhongguo a Ming in Xiyingxian manual painting huapu, lidai huapu huibian [Tianjin: Guji, 1997], vol. in the style of Chen Hongshou (1598-1652) painting one in (reproduced 12, p. 473), and a in the Rietberg

of Chan

passage from bam chopping is no. 69. See also

bowuyuan canghuaji The scroll, attributed to be a Song thought by Wu Hung:

1978-91),

copy, The Double Screen: Medium of " Chicago

Hongzhong is the subject

Univ. Painting (Chicago: Entertainment of Han Xizai'

recent study in Chinese and Representation "The Pr., 1996), 'Night

(act. 943-960) of an excellent

(pp. 29-71).

28. Hong Mai, 1981), Yizhi Yijianzhi (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, are described contests Chun 5.225. Other Academy painting Deng by in scrolls 1 and 10 of his Huaji (1167); see Yu Anlan, Huashi congshu out the Barnhart has pointed 1963), vol. 1.Richard (Shanghai: Renmin, of "Evening Song paintings from the "Eight Views of Xiao and Temple" of remote Xiang," conveyed by the imagery temple, misty intervening and startled birds or reacting See expanses, ("experiencer") figures. in Sung Painting," and Hsiang "Shining Rivers: Eight Views of theHsiao on Chinese Art History, 1991: Proceedings of the International Colloquium Bells from auditory a Distant Painting and Calligraphy (Taipei: National Palace Museum, the scene autumn 1992), vol. and winter 1, PP-45-95, esp. pp. 55~6o. summer scene 29. The scenes remarkable effects in Southern

Museum, Thousand

was Li (A whose identified Z?rich, subject by Chu-tsing Ravines: in the Charles A. Peaks and Myriad Chinese Paintings Drenowatz Collection [Ascona: Artibus Asiae, 1974], no. 4). Painters of the Great Ming: The Imperial Court 35. See Richard Barnhart, and the Zhe Lus interest School in paintings, to the Qin in Berlin cat. 102) (Barnhart, Painters of the Great Ming, Listening note. and a hanging in the following scroll in Beijing mentioned see Barnhart, Painters of the Great Ming, 36. For a color reproduction, (Dallas: Dallas Museum sounds in other appears of Art, 1993), cat. 100. Zhang them his among

are in the Konchi-in, Kyoto; no bijutsu (Osaka: Osaka Municipal These scrolls are sometimes 1126), but James Cahill's ter related to but outside Chinese California Painters

is in the Kuon-ji; the spring Museum ascribed

is lost. See So Gen cpls. 51-52. (r. 1100

cat. 63. Flute players are often in close conjunction with water. pictured Xia Gui's in the Twelve Views See, for example, (act. ca. 1190-1230) Nelson Kansas Gallery, City (Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting Indiana Univ. Pr. and Cleveland Museum of Art, 1980], [Bloomington: in Nanjing, scroll by Sheng Mou and the female 58), a hanging in a painting Immortal Lu in Beijing yu by Zhang (Mingdai gongting huihua poem 1983], no. 78). The Zhepai xuanji [Beijing: Wenwu, on Shen Zhou's inscribed album leaf of aman on amountaintop speaks to a distant torrent," though neither of "the sound of a flute responding no. 154B). flute nor torrent is to be seen (Eight Dynasties, I am grateful to Jan Stuart, who identified the subject of this to it. Ouyang's text must and called my attention also be the painting subject of Studying on an Autumn Night (Qiuye dushu; 1638), a fan paint in a Hong collection Kao, ed., The ing by Chen Guan Kong (Mayching 37. on Fans Xun Tang Collection and Calligraphy of Painting [Hong Art Museum, The Chinese of Hong Kong: University 1996], no. Kong, Nanko scroll, one of a pair, by Haruki 62); and of a hanging (1759 as a picture misidentified Far 1839), (Martie WYoung, ofTaoYuanming Eastern Art in Upstate NewYork [Ithaca: Cornell 1976], no. 89; University, Cheng the other scroll of the pair is indeed of Tao). Other illustrations of text, are readily Ouyang's Qiushengfu, accompanied by the transcribed a handscroll identifiable: under Tang Yin's they include (1470-1523) name in the Sumitomo collection comp., Ch??goku kaiga (Suzuki Kei, s?g? zuroku Shiqu 3, pp. and of Tokyo vol. 3, p. 68-003;see Pr., 1982-83], [Tokyo: Univ. [rpt. Taipei: Guoli 1971], 2nd ser., vol. Gugong bowuyuan, a leaf in an album of 1736 under the name of Jin Nong 1610-11); in the Rietberg Museum (1687-1764) (Li, A Thousand Peaks, no. 51.H); baoji no.

of Art, 1980), to Emperor Huizong

a mas attribution?"13th century works, by the Hangchou circle" (Index of Early Academy and Paintings: T'ang, of Sung, Yuan [Berkeley: Univ.

Pr., 1980], p. 213)?seems right to me. see Hui-shu the Past, cpl. 90. On this painting, 30. See Possessing Lee, "Art and Imperial andWang Images at the Late Southern Sung Court," to Listening "From Spring Fragrance, Clearing After Rain to the Yao-t'ing, in the Pines: Some Proposals Wind Context of Paintings for the Courtly in Arts of the Palace Museum, Taipei," both Museum of Art, 1996; the (New York: Metropolitan Sung version Chinese ofWang's in Gugong xueshu jikan 14.1 article appeared that Ma's "phoenix-eyed" listener, along [Autumn 1996]). Lee proposes with his portraits of Confucian in Possessing the Past, sages (reproduced and Yuan is based on the idealized features of Lizong himself. pp. 256-59), to this colophon, calls attention and concurs with 31. Li Linean it, in his article "Zong Ma Lin de 'Jingting songfeng' tanqi," Gugong wenwu 1983), pp. 95-101. yuekan 6 (September we In an anecdote recounted learn about an Nabokov, by Vladimir listener from another culture: a Harvard botanist able to accomplished identify through twigs the "with air his eyes shut, merely from the sound Lombardy of their swish ('Hornbeam, honeysuckle, House, [New York: Random poplar...')" quan 26.3a. of Art by Ma Lin in the National

1989], p. 304). (Speak, Memory is the third of Lu's Songxia zongbi poems; Lu Fangweng 32. This ji, Sibu beiyao ed. (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1936), vol. 2001, See also Ma Lin's album painting in the Metropolitan Museum in New twisted clasped York,

a with Great Pine," of a man "Landscape standing before tree with windblown and hands vines, head bowed pine hung as if in obeisance, scene redolent in a moonlit of thoughts of (Wen C. 8th-i4th Fong, Beyond Century Chinese Painting and Representation: Museum of Art, [New York: Metropolitan

a picture shiritsu (1682?ca. 1756) in Osaka (Osaka by Hua Yan Min Shin no bijutsu [Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1982], no. 60; see Talking about Autumn (Jiangqiu) in Cleveland, Eight Dynasties, no. 265. In Pursuit of Antiquity The 38. See Roderick Whitfield, (Princeton: bijutsukan, also Hua's Art Museum, figure's face Princeton University, and expression. has written James Cahill 1969), no. 6, for a good detail of the

immortality Calligraphy,

1992], pi. 65). 33. Reproduced 4 (Shanghai is a section

in color in Zhongguo meishu quanji: huihua bian, vol. and Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1987), no. 70.4 (the scene of a scroll illustrating in the lives of eight Chan episodes

in his memorable of 39. As description currents of air in a leaf from the Landscape rendered) (very differently Album for Elder Yu, a late work by the early Qing painter Daoji: we move back to the distant hills, across which the brush has Finally, been read drawn simply in broad, undulating as the drifting mists strokes of dilute but ink. These also suggest can be a flow of evening,

53

of pure a small

and beyond the picture, which through in a boundless continuum of matter segment force and Eccentrics

thus becomes and energy.

painting lection

See James Cahill, Fantastics York: The Asia Society, 1967), p. 75. For this album, which

in Chinese (New Painting in color on 84; the leaf is reproduced p. in New is in the C.C.Wang collection

seeWai-kam Ho, ed., The Century York, (1555-1636), of Tung Ch'i-ch'ang 2 vols. (Kansas Museum of Art, 1992), no. 160. City: Nelson-Atkins wenwu 40. Zhonghua wuqiannian jikan: Minghua (Taipei: Zhonghua wenwu 1987), vol. 1, pp. 162-65, wuqiannian jikan bianji weiyuanhui, in color and black-and-white. On this scroll, see also Im Schatten hoher B?ume: Malerei China some der Mingund Qing-Dynastien Die Kunsthalle, (1368-1911) 1985), no. aus 3. der

8, pi. 158.3. zhi zhaoyin shihua," fig. 3; Ho, Shengmo no. 99, with The Century of Tung Ch'i-ch'ang, Xiang's long colophon in vol. 2, pp. 112-13. translated a contemporary scientist SongYingxing, of Xiang 55. The Shengmo, use of the a to explain in fact made image of expanding ripples in pond see the of "The sound; Cullen, dispersal Christopher 54. Chu-tsing Li, "Xiang Science/Technology think Song had See also from grasped the woodcut Cullen does not Interface," pp. 310-11. However, sense. in the modern the idea of sound waves

the same inscription by Xiang bearing in New York Li, "Xiang (see Shengmo on p. 549). is transcribed 10; the inscription meishu quanji: huihua bian, vol. 53. Zhongguo

is in the C.C.Wang col zhi zhaoyin shihua," fig.

Volksrepublik 41. As Wang Lin adopted

(Baden-Baden: has noted, Yao-t'ing conventions

of dress ("From fourth, Yinjiu

for his wind-listening figure Ma and facial type commonly used Spring Fragrance," Arts and fourteenth of the Sung of Tao s

for representing Tao Yuanming and Yuan, p. 284). the 42. See, for instance, "Twenty 45) Drinking Poems,"

to the Waves /Surges) entitled Tingtao (Listening the Shijuzhai the spatial proximity of the pine qianpu where, given to the inscribed characters tingtao, the "waves" pine clearly designate wind Collectors' Show of Traditional Chinese Woodcut (Special Exhibition: Prints Palace Museum, 1983], p. 163). [Taipei: National an excellent recent study of related aspects of Chinese of painting see Anne Burkus-Chasson, this period '"Clouds and Mists That Emanate For Sink on Mount Lu Shitao's Waterfall and Practices of Away': in the Seventeenth (Art History, vol.19, no. 2 [June Century" discusses guan ("observation"; also a 169-90). Burkus-Chasson

eighth, ershi shou

17b-18a, 19b; Hightower, Poetry ofT'ao for a few of his many pine passages in Zhongguo hualun leibian, ed. Yu Jianhua, vol. 1, 43. Linquan gaozhi; as in Tao s "Returning Home." p. 645. The verb isfu ("stroking"), A 44. Shangu 1971-76), neiji 9.2b-3b. quanji (Sibu beiyao ed., vols. on paintings also of poetry inscribed twelfth-century compilation name without the painter's records this poem, (Sun mentioning with Sound), 1187 ji (Record of Paintings preface Shaoyuan, Shenghua i.2b-3a). [Siku quanshu ed., vols. 213-14], scroll 4 (Huashi 45. Huaji congshu, comp. Yu Haiyan renmin meishu, 1963, 1982], vol. 1, p. 30). Shanghai the Past, cpl. 195. 46. See Possessing 47. The organic, dynamic trees are features of twisted shape of the mountain the Guo Xi tradition; and and [Shanghai:

(Jingjie xiansheng ji 3.16b, CWien, pp. 129, 136, and 144 similar musings. that involve

and

Observation

1996], pp. or "to heed") in terms of visuality verb, "to observe" ("view," specifically "visible conclusions be amplified image"). Her might by construing more to embrace is cer "observation" aural awareness, which broadly onMount in Shitao's Waterfall Lu. tainly part of the figures' experience no. 31, leaf 16; Howard s and Lee, Masterworks, 56. Rogers Rogers catalogue entry remarks power" (p. 149). There to leaves. Leaf 1, dated view, image of great evocative aptly on this "auditory are other sound allusions the extant among no in and also with 1629, also by Xiang figure

the prominent, the poem Tang a poem on the scroll was probably Shi'e inscribed by Yang inspired by as a fit subject for painting. in Guo's Linquan gaozhi (jinshi 785), quoted in land Of course, asAnne Clapp has shown, Tang Yin s primary model scape painting was Li Tang; see The Painting (Chicago: Univ. ofT'angYin of Chicago Pr., 1991). as this poem makes and water"), 48. Interpreting ("wind fengshui art. A Tang Yin scroll in Princeton, a related quat a Guest on aMountain Path, is inscribed with Seeing off in my the Past, p. 387 rain which ears"; see Possessing speaks of "wind Mind andWen C. Fong et al., Images of the (Princeton: The Art Museum, Princeton 1984), pp. 151-55. University, clear, 180-83; Jiang Palace Museum, of Anne pp. ofT'angYin, Clapp, The Painting (Taipei: National Guanyu Tang Yin de yanjiu (1470-1524): 1976), pp. 197-98; Doris CJ. Chu, T'angYin and his Art (New York and Taipei: Highlight Man the International, 1985), the Past, p. 387; and James Cahill, Parting at the p. 78;Wen Fong, Possessing Shore: Chinese Painting 1368-1580 of the Early and Middle Ming Dynasty, York: Weatherhill, 1978), a brief remark on p. 197. (New see Chu-tsing zhi zhaoyin shi Li, "Xiang 50. On Xiang, Shengmo 49. See Zhaoshen, ("Hsiang Eremitism") Painting Poetry Sheng-mo's on Ming Yimin; Xianggang Symposium of the International daxue Zhongguo wenhua yanjiu xuebao (Journal of the Institute Studies and on in the comments is an aural as well as a visual

Zuoheng, the sound ture common inscribed:

on playing has an inscription the qin and whistling. Leaf 7, byWan to 1628, illustrates dated the lines: "The valley silent but for are deep?no mountains of the pines/the bird calls"; the pic in a is a spare scene of rustic buildings embraced pines by flanking aurally "Quiet is formula. Leaf 15, by Li Zhaoheng, suggestive on the stream; a long whistle high speech deep beside in the fore sit by the water Two conversationalists

stands silhouetted the sky on a against ledge in the distance. in color in Zhongguo meishu quanji: huihua bian, vol. 57. Reproduced in Boston handscroll 9, pi. 16; the title is the same as the 1628-1629 mentioned earlier. See also Chu-tsing Li, "Xiang Shengmo Shangyou the tu" (Shanghai bowuguan jikan 4 [1987], pp. 51-60), which explores Venerable Friends of links to the well-known group portrait painting's the same date by Xiang (1653), and Zhang Qi laborative lowing painting year by Xiang Shengmo a portrait of Zhu and very similar (act. mid-17th and Xie Bin, Kuishi col c). Another in the fol done

the mountaintop." a lone whistler ground, while

attentive-looking Years of Chinese

hua"

figure (New Haven: Painting Pr., 1997), p. 270. Foreign Languages Painters of the Great Ming, 58. Barnhart, ified.

in Beijing, also has an et al., 3000 trees; see Yang Xin Pr. and Beijing: Yale Univ. cat. 87; his translation, mod

Proceedings Zhongwen of Chinese no. 2

of Hong of the Chinese ), vol. 8, Kong University tree was the solitary 1976), pp. 531-56. As Li shows, in Xiang's and See also Howard also a loyalist symbol Rogers painting. E. Lee, Masterworks and Qing Painting from the Forbidden Sherman Ming of and Arts Council, 1988), pp. 149-51; (Lansdale, Pa: International City (December 1600-1900 of the Self: Chinese Portraits, A.D. Univ. Pr., 1992), pp. 36-40. (NewYork: Cambridge zhi zhaoyin shihua," fig. 11. 51. See Li, "Xiang Shengmo " de 'Da shu feng hao tu', 52. Yang Xin, Gugong "Xiang Shengmo 67. See also Richard 1980.1, pp. 61-63, Vinograd, yuankan bowuyuan similar album Boundaries 161, nn. 34-35. A very of the Self, pp. 37-38. Vinograd, Boundaries

in color in Possessing is reproduced the Past, p. 388, 59. The painting a translation of the inscription, modified 197, with here, on p. 389. pi. 60. Richard The Art Edwards, (Ann Arbor: of Wen Cheng-ming Museum of Art, of Michigan 1976), no. 21. In this catalogue University see also no. wind of Bo to the Bamboo, a cluster of bamboo 33, Listening sprigs in the an on the nature inscribed with poetic meditation extraordinary in the bamboo, the ears, or the mind. sound and its locus, whether in a poem praising by Xiao Yue, described painting seem a painting; / Inclining it doesn't "Suddenly I seem to hear their sounds...." listening, no. 45; Edwards Wen Cheng-ming, that the suggests of a bamboo

Richard

Juyi, an aural

my

experience: ear and quietly 61. Edwards, Art

brittle

textures of the landscape may certain qin vibra represent ridged see also no. 171; to rhythms. On this painting and poem, Eight Dynasties,

54

and and Chinese "Poetic Shih, Expression Shio-yen Painting," has Orientations, vol.18, no. 5(May 1987), pp. 47-48. Chang Ch'ing-chih inWen's in "The written about the qin music circle styles favored and Zither Music School," Painting of the Styles of theWu Proceedings on Chinese Art History, and International 1991: Painting Colloquium vol. 1, pp. 401-28. Calligraphy, 62. In Tseng Yu-ho Ecke, Wen-jen the Collection ofMr. and Mrs. Mitchell hua: Chinese Hutchinson Literati (Honolulu: Painting from Honolulu

same one Xiang in the album illustrated leaf mentioned Shengmo remarks on the possible for the year 1644, above), and Hay play, fitting on and Qing in Wang's Ming couplet. See also Zhang's in aMisty Sound ofAutumn Grove (Yanlin qiusheng; in the Cleveland inscribed: "...autumn sounds echo Museum, 1657) the trees...." Currents the ofmist comb unexpectedly through through head a man trees, while as if beckoned a staff pauses and half turns, lowering his holding by a call from the grove to his left (Eight Dynasties, idea may draw loosely on Ouyang's Qiushengfu. (Gefei), Luoyang mingyuan ji (Beijing: Wenxue guji,

of Arts, characters 1988), no. 8 (unidentified onomatopoetic Academy in the second those sounds of nature were also blended with line). The of "lutes and harps" in Su Che's poem for Li Gonglin's Lingling Gorge scene above. Any number of other examples could be cited; see, quoted for one, player seated of 1822 by Qian Du of a qin (1763-1844) painting a branch of bamboo mean brook, by a tumbling arching is inscribed: "In a light breeze, the bam beside him. A couplet an album

no. 211).The 66. Li Wenshu 1955),

ingfully is charming with / The boo the tones of the stream" qin harmonizes Years of Chinese Leaves Hundred and Calligraphy: Album Painting (Eight the Collection [Waterville, Maine: from of theMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston Colby

Pp. 8,9, 5 is in Shanghai whistler 67. Sheng Mou's (Zhongguo meishu quanji: hui in Nanjing; hua bian, vol. 5, no. 83); his flute player and Dai Jin's rain in a Tokyo listener collection (Suiboku bijutsu taikei, vol. 2, cpl. private is reminiscent in Xiu's of Ouyang 19; the figure's face in this painting the Freer A Wu the Sound ofAutumn, late fourteenth-century (1269-1346) association of branches above). of the prominent Daoist scroll of portraits in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts illustrates this tree device with the idea of listening. head in the Portrait discussed

Quanjie

Museum of Art, 1979], no. 34). College and Flying Waterfall, mentioned above; also 63. See his Pine Ravine in The Garden of the Unsuccessful his leaf of the "Fishing Stone" Politician in the Metropolitan in New Museum album York (Edwards, Wen to the Stream (Tingquan) and 51, leaf E); and his Listening in Jiang and Clear Springs (1542) in Taipei, both illustrated nian zhan (Ninety Years ofWu School Painting) Wupai huajiushi no.

strong Umbrella-like

Cheng-ming, Verdant Pines Zhaoshen,

to the Pine Wind (Ting to a pair of auspicious er sound is not setting where landscape the Land of Dragons: 1,000 Years of Chinese Fine Arts, 1997], no. 149). 68.

of Listening one of him a qin songfeng xiang) and the playing cranes. No such branches canopy him in anoth involved Painting (WuTung, [Boston: Museum Tales from of

arch overWu's

Palace Museum, lat 1975), cpl. 007 and no. 147.The (Taipei: National ter work is also reproduced in James Cahill, Parting at the Shore pi. 114. See also Zhou Beneath Pines by a Chen (d. ca. 1536), "Poetic Feelings Stream" (1534), in Cahill, Parting at the Shore, no. 87. cat. 36; also in Ho, Century 64. Fong, Images of the Mind, of Tung Ch'i ch'ang, no. 108. 65. Leaf ch'ang, vol. Time," based on those in Ho, Century 5; translation of Tung Ch'i of Dynastic 2, p. 119, and Jonathan Hay, "The Suspension in Boundaries in China, ed. John Hay Books, (London: Reaktion allude to a poem byWang Wei (the

See Possessing the Past, cpl. 187. in the Arts and Transformation 5000 Years; Innovation 69. China: (New Solomon R. Guggenheim York: Museum, 1998), cpl. 208. See also where the Yiyuan duoying, vol. 36 (1987), p. 35 for a larger reproduction are clearer. figures on the of tex 70. John Hay has remarked "reverberating patterns" ture strokes (cun) and their link to aural imagery cos in early Chinese in Chinese II: The Hierarchic ("Values and History mology Painting, Evolution of Structure," RES 7/8 1984], pp. 114-15). [Spring

1994), p. 177. Parts of the inscription

55