The Landscaped Folds

Abstract

Most of Gong Xian's (1618–1689) long landscape handscrolls were originally structured as accordion albums. This article discusses the morphology and metamorphosis of the accordion folds as a painting format, and rethinks the issues of surface, depth, and depths of Chinese landscape from the perspective of the painter's conception of his work. In the process of landscaping the folds—as opposed to folding the landscapes, Gong Xian subordinated painting to discernable methodologies and sensitives that are inherently related to the folds. The accordion folds were not merely an environmental reference to the representation, but a painter's choice, an authorial impetus and method that effectuated the representation, and an act that realized a work in space. I argue that for Gong Xian, it was not the landscape per se but the painting format that was being represented. Meanwhile, I correlate the issue of format metamorphosis with the increasing ekphrasis in the painting treatises and catalogs compiled in early-modern and modern China to understand image, format, and discourse in a trilateral framework.