"Domesticated Landscapes of Li Gonglin: A View from the Anthropocene," by De-nin Lee

Abstract

Reviewed by: "Domesticated Landscapes of Li Gonglin: A View from the Anthropocene," by De-nin Lee Foong Ping De-nin Lee, "Domesticated Landscapes of Li Gonglin: A View from the Anthropocene," JSYS 45 (2015): 139–74. If the grand peaks, valleys, and waterfalls of paradigmatic Song dynasty landscapes entreat viewers to appreciate high-minded retreat alongside travelers and recluses, what constitutes their "domestication"? Paintings that show knowledge of terrain and technology, that picture efficient agriculture and engineered waterways. Taking up perspectives from eco-art history and criticism, Lee takes special notice of motifs like rice fields, mulberry groves, newly-planted trees, and fish-stocked ponds, urging us to examine them as signs of anthropogenic change. Li Gonglin 李公麟, an artist of great range and invention, is not often studied as a landscapist. Lee conceives of a unique picture in his oeuvre from an eco-critical perspective. "The Lodge of Establishing Virtue" is one of the two opening scenes in Li's portrait of his estate, Mountain Villa (Shanzhuang tu 山莊圖), which stands out from the following sections, and indeed from the Song visual record of works by named artists. The scene was conceptualized in a manner outside of the landscape painter's typical brushwork-orientated repertoire. Robert Harrist underlined Li's use of mapmaking and printmaking conventions when discussing Mountain Villa's transformation of wilderness into a garden-estate. Pan Anyi's study of Li's Buddhist beliefs considered the painting in relation to a paradise. But nature is not only a pure muse for eremites. Some images imply ecological ruptures and the material impact of meeting human needs. Lee calls attention to our assumptions about landscape images—long informed by art, historical, philosophical, and literary discourse—as fundamentally representing a harmonious relationship between humans and nature. Her stated aim is to inflect images of leisure, such as Li Gonglin's, with implied labor. Within the cultural constant of seeking revelations of heavenly approval or disapproval in nature, the symbolism of cosmic harmony in landscapes was particularly useful for imperial purposes. Those picturing advanced technology also rendered power and legitimacy visible, pointing to capable and benevolent rule. Liu Heping has demonstrated the implications of paintings of mills and hydrological engineering. Pang Huiping's study of snow scenes has shown how this subject's meanings needed redirection at court during an actual period of cold climate. Domesticated landscapes counter notions of the pristine wilderness and the ideals that it entails, seeing instead evidence of environmental change and the parties responsible for it. Water-powered [End Page 232] machines redirected natural watercourses; harvesting timber to build dams and dykes for flood prevention fed cycles of erosion. Thus images of land-ownership represent limitations upon the land's ability to generate wealth and impositions upon ecology. With this lens, Lee understands a picture of tree cultivation as a possible reference to windbreaking fengshui forests that prevented erosion and filtered water. From this perspective, various parts of the productive ecology of a working estate might delineate amongst cultivated, soon-to-be cultivated, and uncultivated landscapes, and between the symbolic and mundane features and purposes of Li's estate. Of course, no single lens precludes any other. In an unexpected cross-disciplinary, cross-temporal move, Lee finds purchase in Xie Lingyun's 謝靈運 poems, where the estate is a site of spatial operations and "habituated practices" that problematize conventional oppositions of rustic and urban. Li Gonglin offers "visual cognates" of Xie's panoptic gaze. Li Gonglin's painting is indeed self-reflexive and complex in its juxtaposition of multiple visual conventions. The image itself calls for a correspondingly intersectional interpretive strategy, as Lee's essay proposes. [End Page 233] Foong Ping Seattle Art Museum Copyright © 2021 Society for Song, Yuan, and Conquest Dynasties Studies