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The Landscape Painting of China and Japan by Hugo MünsterbergReview by: Aschwin LippeArs Orientalis, Vol. 3 (1959), pp. 241-244Published by: Freer Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian Institution and Department of the Historyof Art, University of MichiganStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4629122 .

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BOOK REVIEWS 241

to a thorough understanding of them; but rather by allowing them to speak for them- selves. We might well, I believe, spend less of our time on the pursuit of the elusive ch'i-yiin and more on painting; we might, until we can demonstrate more convincingly the actual relevance of Yin and Yang, Ch'an Buddhism, etc. to painting, leave them to the realm of philosophy, religion, and the dabbling of the pseudomystics among our contemporary poets and painters. Less Tao, please, more painting.

JAMES F. CAHILL

The Landscape Painting of China and Japan. By Hugo Miinsterberg. Rutland (Charles E. Tuttle Company), 1955, XV+fI44 pp., I 0 I pls. and i color pl. The late Oskar Mansterberg was the au-

thor of two pioneer works, the Japanische Kunstgeschichte which was published during I904-07, and the Chinesische Kunstgeschichte which appeared in I9I0-I2. In the past 50 years, knowledge of Far Eastern art has greatly increased and deepened. For this our thanks are due to the pioneers in this field. The critical standards we have to apply today are, naturally, higher than even a generation ago and, we hope, will become much more exacting still. By such standards the present book by Mr. Miinsterberg's son falls by the wayside.

There is hardly anything in this book that cannot be found in one or several of the older standard publications or that has not been taught in classrooms, in Europe as well as in this country, for 20 years and more. At the same time, methods and results of more recent research have, on the whole, not been applied or assimilated, and many important discoveries are not even mentioned. The illustrations, 7 I for China and 3 I for Japan, contain hardly a handful of pictures that have not been reproduced over and over again and with which we are not thoroughly familiar. However,

some of the very best are lacking, while, as in all older publications, originals, early and late copies, and worse are indiscriminately thrown together. Paintings that obviously are neither by the same hand nor of the same period or of the same quality are reproduced or mentioned as works of the same painter. This should, perhaps, not surprise us for the author tells us that it is "next to impossible to determine with certainty which scrolls are by the artists to whom they are ascribed and which are no more than copies of originals or works in- spired by some famous masterpiece of one of the great painters of the past" (p. 9). He explains that this is the case because (p. 22)

''not only did the Chinese throughout their history assiduously copy the old masters, often with remarkable skill, but when doing so they also copied the signature, seals, and colophons. Likewise, they painted in the manner of an old master, not with any intention of deceiving but rather to show their veneration for the great artist in whose style they were working. Finally, in modern times, there are copies which are outright forgeries of older paintings."

Now, forgeries were made as soon as there was a market for them, which in China was the case at least as early as the Northern Sung period (see Mi Fu, Hua Shih; and A. Soper, Kuo Jo-hsii's Experiences in Paint- ing, p. 87).

Legitimate copying was indeed standard practice in China, for the purpose of studying and for the purpose of creating a reproduc- tion. In these cases, signatures and colophons were sometimes copied to have them on rec- ord, in the handwriting of the copyist or with an additional signature or note by the latter. Wherever this is not the case, this reviewer doubts the legitimate intention. However, these inscriptions were often added later. The seals certainly were never copied in good faith.



242 BOOK REVIEWS

Paintings "in the manner of" often have little in common with their source of inspiration, sometimes as little as a Van Gogh painting after Millet with its model.

Without minimizing the difficulties which face us, it is, in this reviewer's opinion, precisely the job of the art historian to find out which is which. These difficulties, incidentally, are not unknown to students of Western art, as Messrs. Dossena and Van Meegeren have reminded us.

To be fair, in the text the author makes an attempt to be more specific in his evalua- tions of the pictures he describes or mentions. However, this reviewer regrets that, in most cases, he cannot accept the dates or attribu- tions given by the author, generally without any substantiating proof or argument.

Frequently the author uses a later and rather poor copy to illustrate the style of an artist or of a period. His choice seems to be quite deliberate for he tells us (p. 24, speaking of two paintings of the Palace Museum which were exhibited in London): "They are rather poor in quality but for that reason probably closer to the originals than they would have been if the artist who painted them had had a stronger artistic personality."

There is, of course, a grain of truth in this. But even a poor copyist is bound to introduce, unconsciously, stylistic elements of his own period into the transmission of an earlier work or style. The poor copy is es- thetically unsatisfactory in addition to being art-historically misleading. Its use does not seem justified when paintings even of the earlier periods exist which are genuine though not by the hand of a famous master.

The text is spattered with well-worn cliches and with excerpts from Chinese sources which are culled from existing translations. It is liberally larded with Chinese and Jap- anese terms which for the innocent reader must give an esoteric aspect to the book.

However, "chii-jen" neither means "gentle- man" nor is it a sobriquet of the bamboo (p. 6); it is the title of the holder of the second degree in the literary examinations; the bamboo is called "tz'u chiin" ("this gentle- man"). For "ch'i-yiin sheng-tung," which is called "as elusive and profound as the writings of Lao-tzu" (p. io) in order to be finally identified with inspiration, compare the search- ing analysis of A. Soper (Far Eastern Quar- terly, vol. 8 [I949], p. 4I2 ff.) and more re- cently W. Acker (Some T'ang and Pre-T'ang texts on Chinese painting, Leiden, I954,

p. XX ff.). "Ku-hua" would mean "bone- painting" and not "boneless painting" (p. 27 ); the term is "mu-ku hua" (B. March, Some technical terms of Chinese painting, No. I20)

and means "painting without outline, in col- our" (March, op. cit.). Meditation is dhydna, not dhyani (p. S6) ; Soami's catalogue is called Kundaik (w) an Sayuichoki and not Kintaikan . . . (p. 95) ; the isle of the immortals, Mt. P'eng-lai and not Pen Lai (p. 96), etc.

Though the author makes a half-hearted obeisance in the direction of Ming and Ch'ing painting, he cannot conceal a strong bias in favor of the earlier periods. This bias should be tempered by more knowledge and understanding. During the Ming dynasty, he tells us, "the landscape was no longer as important as it had been"; painting "lacks the depth of feeling and profundity of thought" (of Sung art) ; it is concerned with "human activities," "with his (man's) life in the daily world"; it also puts "greater emphasis upon realistic detail" (p. 65). True, there was a lot of genre painting in Ming times, but perhaps not much more than earlier. And the great Ming painters like Shen Chou were not the least bit interested in man's life in the daily world nor in realistic detail. The author sees a "marked decline in painting during the last part of the Ming period" which lasted until the middle of the seventeenth century and was the result of



BOOK REVIEWS 243

Tung Ch'i-ch'ang's academic teachings (p. 72 ) . Now the late Ming period (the dynasty ended I644) was precisely the time when "new currents in art arose" (ibid.) ; these new currents cannot be understood without seeing the influence of Tung's paintings and teachings; they embrace the more traditional group of Wang Chien and Wang Shih-min as well as the individualists whom the author surprisingly calls "mostly Taoist monks" (p. 75) and places in the Ch'ing period. True, many of the latter were still very young at the fall of the dynasty, but their attitude, their writings as well as their art leave no doubt that they belong with or are an outgrowth of the late Ming period.

The author deplores the traditional aspect of Ch'ing painting but admits that these pictures after early masters have an unmistakable character of their own (p. 74). He calls Wang Hui a painter without originality, but, in the same sentence, a man of great inventive- ness (p. 74). He characterizes the latter's beautiful handscroll in the Freer Gallery as "thin and uninspired" and lacking ch'i-yiin; at last we have somebody who knows ch'i-yiin when he sees it! The other three Wangs are barely mentioned by name.

Yuan Chiang, incidentally, is a typical product of the Northern and not of the South- ern school (p. 76 and pl. 67) .

Though the author is aware of the historical reasons for the emphasis on Late Sung painting which pervades Western criticism (pp. 52 and 73), his own taste shows the same preference. For him "Ma Yuan and Hsia Kuei have few if any equals in the history of painting" (p. 58). Sung painting seems to have become identical with Late Sung painting (cp. the selection of titles on p. 8 or the re- mark that "infinitely-receding depth [is] so characteristic of Sung painting," p. 6i). The importance and the characteristics of the tenth century and the Early (Northern) Sung period

do not seem to have been clearly understood by the author who perhaps is less responsive to the beauty of the few existing originals by its great masters. There is a chapter on the Five Dynasties and Early Sung period and another on the Northern Sung period; Early and Northern Sung are in general usage synonymous.

"No doubt landscape painting itself under- went considerable development during the fifth century" (since Ku K'ai-chih; p. i6); "there must have been landscape scrolls painted during the period which showed a more advanced style" (than Tun-huang; p. I 7) . "With the sixth century, developments reached a climax which led to the establish- ment of true landscape painting" (p. I7) ; "it may be assumed that some pure landscapes were painted at the time" (p. I7). "It would thus appear that the sixth century already knew landscape painting as a distinct genre

. (p. i8). "Not until the T'ang period (6I8-907) did landscape painting evolve into a separate and major genre" (p. I9). Of a T'ang (style) picture: "This is not [yet] landscape painting for its own sake . . ." (p. 22), "this is by no means a pure landscape

." Wang Wei "was somewhat more advanced in the evolution of the pure landscape" (p. 25). "While the T'ang painters had al- ways seen the landscape in relation to human activity, the tenth century artists created a pure landscape . . ." (p. 31).

The above excerpts show a somewhat con- tradictory way of arguing and a considerable disregard of the existing authentic material. The Tun-huang frescoes are summarily called provincial and "only a crude reflection of the style current at the Imperial court and in the other cultural centers" (p. i 6, p. 2 8 ); the sixth- century wall paintings of T'ung-kou in Man- churia and the Heij6 district in Korea, the Six Dynasties and T'ang wall paintings in the Mai-chi-shan caves in Kansu, as well as the



244 BOOK REVIEWS

T'ang ones at the Wu-t'ai-shan (discovered by Liang Ssu-ch'eng) are not mentioned.

Going still further back, we read that "the earliest landscapes in Chinese art are found in the Han period" (p. I3). The author here means landscape elements like mountains and clouds, trees and buildings. He adds that no examples of actual paintings have survived (ibid.). The earliest surviving examples of landscape elements date from the late Chou period; these are to be seen on painted lacquers, engraved and inlaid bronzes, and in at least two real paintings on cloth or silk. As for the Han period, there are also painted lacquers and tiles and the murals of Liao-yang (South Manchuria).

Summing up, this reviewer regrets that the author does not seem to be sufficiently ac- quainted with the existing material, or to be equipped with the necessary critical approach to the individual examples. Consequently he does not show any real grasp of the historical and stylistic development and of its back- ground and is satisfied with using the traditional pigeonholes of dynastic periods, the contents of which are oversimplified or dis- torted. His stylistic and compositional analy- ses are sometimes quite competent but, es- pecially with periods or artists that do not inspire him, he fails to understand the poetic mood or message of a painting which, in the case of the "literary" paintings, generally is clearly indicated by its inscription (v. pp. 76 and 78 on Wang Hui and Shih-t'ao, pp. 6o and 64 on Huang Kung-wang and the other Yuan painters). Obviously it is a very difficult task to condense 2,000 or even I,000 years of Chinese landscape painting into some 70 pages and 70 illustrations, but in this reviewer's opinion it has not been solved here.

The chapters dealing with Japanese landscape painting seem to show more understanding. Apparently the author has profited from

his prolonged stay in that country. However, we encounter some of the same wishful think- ing about the earlier periods: "It would seem likely that a painter who could do such a charming landscape on a rough piece of cloth (the Sh6s6in hemp-cloth) could have painted highly developed landscapes on silk or paper

. ." (p. 86); speaking of the Genji scroll: "probably the pure landscape also existed" (p. 88).

Speaking of the Ippen and Saigyo scrolls, the author says that the landscape is "again influenced by the Chinese" and that there is "a new dependence on Chinese models" (p. 9I). He goes on to say; "There is no doubt that by the end of the Kamakura period Sung painting had begun to reach Japan and that it was exerting an influence which was to become dominant during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries" (ibid.).

In fact, relations with China were resumed toward the end of the Fujiwara period and paintings and painters of the Ch'an (Zen) school as well as of the so-called Chekiang school (of religious painting) reached Japan. However, the scrolls mentioned above do not show a trace of Sung landscape painting but are typical (and very beautiful) Japanese developments of the T'ang style.

The choice of illustrations is more con- sistent than in the Chinese section though it is open to discussion whether S6tatsu's Genji screens (pl. go) are his most famous and most typical work (p. II3), and the wisdom of in- cluding five prints and one Western-style Nagasaki-school painting among the 3 I plates is debatable.

Notes, Bibliography, and Index wind up the handsomely presented volume.

ASCHWIN LIPPE

Modern Japanese Prints: An Art Reborn. By Oliver Statler. Tokyo (Charles E.

