The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Huang Gongwang · Fuchun shan ju tu · a handscroll in monochrome ink on paper, painted for the Daoist Zheng Chuyuan, Master Wuyong, begun about 1347 or 1348 and finished about 1350 · cut in two after a fire in 1650: the short first piece, The Remaining Mountain, in the Zhejiang Provincial Museum, Hangzhou; the long piece, the Master Wuyong scroll, in the National Palace Museum, Taipei · scored as one work in its two pieces, read from right to left; the opening lost to the fire is charged to its survival
Mode
Literati landscape: the long dry hemp-fibre stroke made the carrier of the whole, ink built up in layers rather than washed
Mythos
The dwelling in the mountains: the recluse’s world, the river journey, the fisherman free of office
Phase
Painted at sittings over some years, begun about 1347 or 1348 and finished about 1350; burned at its opening and cut in two in 1650
Presentation
Handscroll, monochrome ink on paper, in two pieces in Hangzhou and Taipei, shown together in Taipei in 2011
Register
Pingdan, plainness as a moral quality; serenity sustained, rising quietly six or seven times along the length
Scale
More than six metres of river; six movements of mass and water; a few small figures in a long world
Governing Proposition
A scroll a little over thirty centimetres high and more than six metres long is unrolled an arm’s length at a time, from right to left, and the viewer travels a river: rounded hills, a broad opening of water, a range rising to the highest massing of the whole, water again, a last rise of peaks, and flat water to the end. Every hill is built of the same long, dry stroke, laid pale and then dark, and the river is the paper left bare. The wager of the scroll is that a landscape can be the record of one mind over years, and that the brush, not the view, is what a painting shows.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
Huang Gongwang lived from 1269 to 1354. He painted this scroll for a Daoist friend, Zheng Chuyuan, called Master Wuyong, beginning it about 1347 or 1348 and finishing it about 1350. Its title is Fuchun shan ju tu, Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, after the Fuchun River in Zhejiang. It was not made at one sitting. It was painted over some years, a passage at a time, and the painter’s own colophon belongs to the work as part of its making. The scroll is 676 years old.
It is a handscroll, monochrome ink on paper, with no colour, a little over thirty centimetres high and more than six metres long, its length about twenty-one times its height. It is not hung. It is unrolled from right to left, an arm’s length at a time, so that no point of it is ever seen with the whole. Since 1650 it has been in two pieces: a short first piece, The Remaining Mountain, in the Zhejiang Provincial Museum in Hangzhou, and the long Master Wuyong scroll in the National Palace Museum in Taipei.
The work scored is the two pieces as one, the composition read as a single journey along the river. Read so, it falls into six movements, alternating mass and water: a single broad hill above the bank; a long sequence of rounded hills, pines and a village on the near bank; a first broad opening of water, with a fisherman’s boat and a far shore; the central range, rising to the highest massing of the whole; a second opening of water, with low banks and a distant ridge; and a last rise of peaks that closes in flat water and distant hills. The count of six is the desk’s division, not the painter’s.
Movement II
The hills are built, not washed. The texture stroke the tradition calls hemp-fibre, long, dry and slightly rounded, is laid down in pale ink and then laid over in darker ink, layer on layer, until a hill has weight with no wash in it at all. Moss is set on the ridges in dots. Trees stand along the banks in several kinds of foliage, pine, bare branch and dotted leaf, each made with a precision that never stiffens. The darkest ink in the scroll is in the accents on the near trees; the palest is almost paper.
Every form in the scroll is made from this small set of marks. The forms differ only in how densely the stroke is laid and in how dark the ink is. The central range is the stroke laid many times; a far shore is the same stroke laid once. That is why the scroll holds together across its length: near and far, mass and void, pine and moss, village and empty river all obey one law of the brush. Where the law slackens it can be seen. The hand varies between sittings, some passages looser and some more worked, and the figures and buildings are drawn in a plainer shorthand than the hills around them.
The handling is the subject. The proposition of the scroll, that the brush carries the person, could be made only by a painting whose every passage is visibly the same hand at different hours, and this one is. Its command of ink and paper is at the top of the medium; its costs are slight, in the summary figures and in some passages of the long middle where the stroke repeats itself rather than renews.
Movement III
Twice the hills stop and the river opens. In those places the paper is left bare. There is no wash for the water and no line for its surface; the far shore is two or three strokes of the palest ink, and on the first opening a fisherman’s boat sits small in the empty river. The river is the paper. The stroke withheld is the last term of the scroll’s one law, after the stroke laid many times and the stroke laid once, and it is the place where the eye, after a long passage of hills, is let go.
The scroll rises often and never high. There is nothing here of Fan Kuan’s Travelers among Mountains and Streams, a cliff standing over tiny figures; there is no terror and no towering. The central range is grand only by accumulation, gathering to a weight the low banks before it do not prepare. Each opening of water is a release of breath, and at the end the distant hills fade into the paper as if the world went on past the edge. The elevation is serenity sustained, six or seven risings along the length, real and not at the top of the scale. The scroll declines transport on purpose.
The handscroll is the form that makes this a journey. A hanging scroll would show the same hills as a view, a wall as a panorama all at once; unrolled an arm’s length at a time, they become a duration, and the viewer travels them as the river runs. Inside that journey the alternation is required: each massing earned by the low bank before it, each opening placed where the eye needs breath. What could yield is in the long middle, where a stretch of rounded hills could be shortened by a third without the structure failing. The journey is compelled; its exact length is permitted.
Movement IV
The landscape Huang inherited was a world shown. The monumental painters of the Northern Song, Fan Kuan, Guo Xi and Li Cheng, built the mountain as a massive, objective presence; the Southern Song academy of Ma Yuan and Xia Gui made it a lyric fragment; both were the work of professionals for a court. This scroll turns from the world’s grandeur to the painter’s brush and mind. It takes the dry hemp-fibre stroke from Dong Yuan and Juran and makes it the carrier of the whole, lays ink dry and in layers rather than in wash, keeps the years of its making visible in it, and holds the amateur’s painting to be the highest kind. Zhao Mengfu had already opened that return to Dong Yuan and Juran, and an old Daoist painting for a friend risked nothing in public; the turn was large, the stake small.
What the scroll brings into the open is that a landscape can be the record of one mind over time. The world it records is unhurried and plain: people fish, sit in a pavilion, cross a bridge, and nothing happens. The tradition’s word for its quality is pingdan, plainness and blandness held as a moral quality. That is a state more than a meaning, and the social condition the scroll is often read as answering, the scholar outside office under the Yuan, is read into it from its circumstances more than compelled by anything in it. The disclosure is real and through image, and it stops one tenth short of the bar the summit asks.
The archetype is the dwelling in the mountains: the recluse’s world, the river journey, the fisherman free of office. The title builds it, and the scroll gives it the shape of a passage through a world in which no one rules. But the myth is carried more by the title, the place and the tradition than built into the picture: the fisherman and the man in the pavilion are small, and could be read as staffage. The orders the scroll holds are integrated, the figures living in the landscape and not beside it, and they are few by design: there is no family in it, no state and no history as event.
Movement V
In 1650 a collector of the Wu family of Yixing ordered the scroll burned, so that it might go with him in death. A nephew pulled it from the fire. The opening was charred away and the scroll was cut in two: the short first piece became The Remaining Mountain, and the long piece went on as the Master Wuyong scroll. What was lost was a beginning, not the central range and not the close, and the work still reads whole without it. The fire ran the subtractive test once, and the structure held.
A second loss was of place, not of paper. A Ming copy on silk, the Ziming scroll, was taken by the Qianlong emperor for the original and inscribed heavily, and the true scroll was dismissed as a copy; for some two centuries the copy stood in its place. Meanwhile the scroll was copied as a method. Shen Zhou copied it in the fifteenth century. Dong Qichang set Huang at the head of the orthodox lineage of the Southern School. The Four Wangs, above all Wang Yuanqi and Wang Hui, made his manner the standard of the Orthodox school, painting after Huang Gongwang across whole careers, and that school was the court and literati standard into the twentieth century. Much of that reach belongs to the manner; this scroll is its named source.
In 2011 the two pieces were shown together in Taipei. The scorch marks are at the joins. The order of the sittings is still being read from the ink, and the scroll’s relation to the Fuchun landscape, to Daoist practice and to Huang’s writing on painting is still argued. Along the Fuchun the hills are still laid pale and then dark, the river is still the bare paper, and the far shore is still two strokes of ink so pale it is almost not there. The scroll has survived its owners’ love twice, and it is still unrolled from the right.
Act III · The Twelve
The subtractive test bites harder on a handscroll than on a single field, and the scroll’s own history has run it once. The fire of 1650 took the opening, and what remains still reads as the work: the beginning was not load-bearing. Inside the surviving scroll the alternation of hill and water is required. Each opening of water is where the eye breathes, and each massing is earned by the low bank before it; the central range cannot go, nor the last flat water that closes the journey. What yields is in the long middle passages of rounded hills and trees, where a stretch could be shortened by a third without the structure failing, and the method of making was additive. The journey is compelled; its exact length is permitted.
Score: 8.2 / 10
What the scroll brings into the open can be stated: a landscape is a record of a mind over time. The literati proposition, that the brush carries the person, is disclosed not as a slogan but as an object more than six metres long, every passage of it visibly the same hand at different hours. And a recluse’s mind is found not in protest but in an unhurried, plain world where people fish and cross bridges without event. Disclosure through image is credited in full. What holds the axis at 8.4 is that much of what the scroll gives is a state, the calm the tradition calls pingdan, and a state ranks below a meaning; the condition of the scholar outside office under the Yuan is read into the scroll from its circumstances more than compelled by it.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The elevation is the opposite of the Northern Song sublime of Fan Kuan’s cliff over tiny travellers. There is no terror and no towering; the highest massing, in the central range, is grand only by accumulation. What rises is quieter and frequent. Each opening of water, where the paper is left empty and the far shore is a few strokes of pale ink, is a release of breath. The central range, built of layered strokes, gathers to a weight the low banks do not prepare. The last distant hills fade into the paper as if the world went on past the scroll. The height is moderate and the frequency high, six or seven risings along the length. The axis rewards transport, and the scroll refuses transport by design.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The archetype is the dwelling in the mountains: the recluse’s world, the river journey, the fisherman who is free of office. The title builds it, and the scroll gives it a structure, a passage through a world in which no one rules, where figures appear only as fishermen, a man in a pavilion, a traveller on a bridge. The particular is kept: the river and hills near Fuchun, composed rather than mapped. What holds the axis at 8.2 is that the myth is carried more by the title, the place and the tradition than built into the picture as load-bearing structure. The fisherman and the pavilion are small, and could be read as staffage. The myth is evoked strongly and built in part.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The inheritance is the monumental landscape of the Northern Song, of Fan Kuan, Guo Xi and Li Cheng, and the lyric fragment of the Southern Song academy, of Ma Yuan and Xia Gui: in either case a world shown, painted by professionals for a court. The departure is a landscape that records the painter’s brush and mind rather than the world’s grandeur: the long dry hemp-fibre stroke, out of Dong Yuan and Juran, made the carrier of the whole; ink laid dry and built up rather than washed; a scroll made over years with its time visible in it; the amateur’s painting as the highest kind. The turn is large and governed the next six centuries. The stake is held down: Zhao Mengfu had already opened the Yuan return to Dong Yuan and Juran, and an elderly Daoist painting for a friend ran no public risk.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Change the form and the work stops knowing almost everything it knows. The knowledge is that a landscape is lived in time, and the handscroll is the form that knows it: unrolled an arm’s length at a time, it makes the viewer travel the river, and no point of it is seen with the whole. As a hanging scroll the same hills would be a view; on a wall they would be a panorama, all at once; here they are a duration. The dry, layered stroke is also the form of the knowledge, since the claim that the mind is in the brush is made only because every passage is built of the same marks. The water is form, not absence: the river is the paper. Some long passages of hill would know the same in another arrangement, which holds the axis below the top.
Score: 9.1 / 10
Evidence over promise: 676 years, and a literature that has not closed. The scroll has been copied and recopied as a method, so that painters have returned to it as a source of brushwork for six centuries, and Wang Hui and Wang Yuanqi rebuilt it in copies of their own. The question of the true scroll against the copy the Qianlong emperor preferred kept connoisseurs in dispute and turns on reading the surface itself. The order of its sittings is still being reconstructed from the ink, and its relation to the real Fuchun landscape, to Daoist practice and to Huang’s own treatise on landscape painting is open. Part of the literature concerns the object’s adventures rather than the painting, and the central meaning is agreed: the figure stops at 9.0.
Score: 9.0 / 10
Force and reach are scored together, in the field of Chinese landscape painting from the fourteenth century on. Intrinsic force is high: the scroll is the fullest statement of the Yuan reorganisation of landscape around the brush and the scholar’s mind, against the Song view of the world. The discount is that much of the reach belongs to Huang’s manner rather than this scroll alone, and that outside East Asia it is small; but this scroll is the named source of the later copies, so the reach is in part its own. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: Shen Zhou copied it in the fifteenth century; Dong Qichang set Huang at the head of the orthodox lineage of the Southern School; the Four Wangs, above all Wang Yuanqi and Wang Hui, made his manner the standard of the Orthodox school, which held at court and among the literati into the twentieth century.
Score: 9.2 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric, at 676 years. Form: the fire of 1650 took the opening and divided the scroll, but what was lost was a beginning, not the central range or the close, and the river journey, its alternation of mass and water and the brush in every passage are legible in both pieces. The charge is real and proportionate. Presence: owned, inscribed and copied by every later generation, held in the imperial collection, and since 2011 shown reunited; the emperor’s error, which set a copy in its place for some two centuries, is a charge on presence, not on survival. Fabric: the scorch at the joins and the old paper are the smallest charge. The loss is modest and the presence wide, and the figure sits at the top of the band for a work of centuries with part of its form lost.
Score: 9.1 / 10
Command of ink and brush on paper, judged to the same anchors as every medium. The making is load-bearing, because the scroll’s claim is that the stroke is the mind. The hemp-fibre texture strokes are long, dry, slightly rounded and laid in layers, pale ink first and darker later, so that the hills have weight without wash. The moss dots and the trees, in several kinds of foliage, pine, bare branch and dotted leaf, are made with a precision that never stiffens; the far shore is set down in two or three strokes of the palest ink. The tonal range of monochrome is fully used, from dense black accents on the near trees to ink so pale it is almost paper. The costs are slight: the figures and buildings are summary beside the hills, and some passages in the long middle repeat their stroke.
Score: 9.3 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the dense central range, the scroll’s greatest mass, and the empty water with the far shore barely marked. They obey one law, the dry brush and the alternation it serves. The range is the stroke laid many times, the far shore the same stroke laid once, the water the stroke withheld. Every form in six metres is built from the same small set of marks, and the forms differ only in density and tone. The range covered is wide for a monochrome: near and far, mass and void, pine and moss, village and empty river. Two things resist. The hand varies between sittings, some passages looser and some more worked, and a careful eye sees the seams; and the figures and buildings follow a plainer law, a shorthand, than the hills around them.
Score: 9.1 / 10
The orders held: the natural order, given almost the whole of the scroll, in hills, trees, water and the passage of distance; settlement, in villages, pavilions, a bridge and huts by the shore; labour, in the fishermen in their boats; consciousness, in the scroll’s claim to be a mind’s record and in the scholar seated in a pavilion looking at the water; time, in the journey and in the years of making; and the sacred, in the Daoist sense of a world followed without forcing, implicit rather than shown. They are integrated: the figures live in the landscape, not beside it. What holds the axis at 7.3, the lowest of the twelve, is what is absent by design: the family, the state and history as event. The human world is a few figures in a long river, and the figure describes that refusal.
Score: 7.3 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.7 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 9.3, then Pressure on Tradition at 9.2, then The Living Form, The Imperishable and The Inner Law at 9.1. A dry stroke laid pale and then dark that gives hills weight without wash; a scroll that set the standard of Chinese landscape for six centuries; a form that turns a landscape into a duration; a work that reads whole after a fire took its opening; and one law of the brush, the stroke laid many times, once, and withheld, across six metres.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.3: nature, settlement, labour, consciousness, time and an implicit sacred are held and integrated, but the family, the state and history as event are absent by design, and the human world is a few figures in a long river. Below the rest of the twelve, The Inevitable at 8.2: the alternation of hill and water is required, but stretches of the long middle could be shortened without loss; and The Archetypal Deep at 8.2: the recluse’s river is evoked by title, place and tradition more than built into the picture.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.2 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 9.1, The Made at 9.3, The Inner Law at 9.1, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on two of five: Pressure on Tradition at 9.2, The Imperishable at 9.1 and The Swerve at 8.8 clear the bar of 8.5, but The Unconcealment at 8.4 falls one tenth short, what it discloses being more a state of plainness than a meaning that can be stated and held, and The Archetypal Deep at 8.2 falls three tenths short, the recluse’s myth evoked by title, place and tradition more than built into the picture. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis it governs falls below The Inevitable and The Archetypal Deep at 8.2, against 7.5. The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.3. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The twelve sum to 104.1, an average of 8.675 that displays 8.7, in Tier IV, seven tenths above the 8.0 at which it begins and three tenths below the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the scroll as an object and as a history, and of its surface from reproduction, not from the scroll unrolled in hand; the passages are described by section, not by inch. No image or written source was consulted. The work scored is the one handscroll, Fuchun shan ju tu, monochrome ink on paper, painted by Huang Gongwang for the Daoist Zheng Chuyuan (Master Wuyong), begun about 1347 or 1348 and finished about 1350, as it now stands in its two pieces: The Remaining Mountain in the Zhejiang Provincial Museum, Hangzhou, and the Master Wuyong scroll in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, shown together in Taipei in 2011. Both pieces are scored as one work. The opening lost to the fire of 1650, and the division, are weighed on The Imperishable alone. The painter’s own colophon is part of the work’s making; its words are neither quoted nor summarised. Later colophons and seals are context. The Ming copy on silk called the Ziming scroll, which the Qianlong emperor took for the original, and the later copies by Shen Zhou, Wang Hui, Wang Yuanqi and others, are context and are not scored. The division into six sections is the desk’s, not the painter’s. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the exact dimensions of the two pieces, the length of the burned opening, the name of the collector who ordered the burning, the wording of the painter’s colophon, the names on the later colophons, the date of the emperor’s error and of its correction, the legend that ties the Fuchun River to a recluse of the Han, and the account of Shen Zhou’s copy and of Dong Qichang’s writing on this scroll.