Gao Shiming<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gao Shiming<\/strong> What we see reflected in twentieth-century Chinese\u00a0shanshui<\/em>\u00a0(ink landscape) painting is the destruction and chaos wrought upon the natural landscape by the century\u2019s civilizational conflicts, and the resulting pandemonium of symbols and images. Xu Longsen seeks to restore some kind of order to\u00a0shanshui\u00a0<\/em>from within this chaotic and broken state. In his monumental compositions, his gaze looks far into the past, to the dense mists and the boundless primeval darkness at the beginning of time, when Heaven and Earth came into being Within this monumentality of scale, the forms, patterns and connotations of brush painting all undergo a fundamental change. Xu Longsen has revived the cardinal virtues of Chinese painting\u2014the qualities of being forceful and unrestrained, open-hearted and expansive. Over a period of five centuries, the presence of these qualities in Chinese painting was gradually diminished under the dual impact of the literati \u2018studio culture\u2019 of the Ming and Qing periods, and the modern art academy. In Xu Longsen\u2019s creative process, these qualities have been recaptured and revitalized. For Xu, the total experience of his art is not only a question of what Zong Bing (style name Zong Shaowen, 375-443) described as \u2018spiritual\u2019 travel\u2013entering into the realm of a landscape painting through quiet contemplation\u2013but also a question of the way Xu Longsen actively responds to the public space. What contemporary artists must face is no longer an era in which art was appreciated by \u2018two like-minded souls sharing their thoughts in a hut in the wilderness,\u2019 as the literary scholar Qian Zhongshu (1910-1998) put it, but rather an era in which art is seen within the cacophony of a public space. The art of landscape painting must confront the new reality of mammoth exhibition spaces shared with a plethora of other media, with the implication that all kinds of artistic practices are now being integrated into the public culture of contemporary society. Xu Longsen\u2019s monumental landscapes thus constitute a kind of proactive practice through which a contemporary shanshui painter has taken on the challenges presented by the cacophonous public space of today\u2019s exhibition venues. The monumental scale of Xu Longsen\u2019s\u00a0shanshui<\/em>\u00a0painting is not the only element that sets his works apart from tradition: there is also a fundamental change taking place within the painting process itself. The imposing and powerful structure of his landscapes requires an almost military level of tactical planning, as well as a disciplined physical control balanced by an active and vital spirit, in order to achieve the creative momentum required to execute and display these monumental vistas. The Dao of painting is the Dao of change. We do not live and create in a vacuum, but rather in a social reality defined by public space. This social reality has already profoundly changed the way we experience and think about our world. Xu Longsen has said that, for Chinese landscape painters, this era of public space is both a daunting challenge and a new opportunity given by history. If the culture of the scholar\u2019s studio encouraged the literati to cling to a belief in the implicit beauty power contained within simplicity, as expressed in the poem by Liu Yuxi (772 \u2013 842): \u2018Mountains need not be high to be famous, if immortals dwell there\/Waters need not be deep to be enchanted, if dragons live within\u2019; then what the art of calligraphy must seek as it enters this age of public space is a state of mind which accepts the grand scale, in which \u2018no mountain is too high, and no ocean is too deep\u2019. To achieve this state of mind requires not only a deeply felt experience of the \u2018mountains and water\u2019 of nature, but also a willingness to engage in a profound reflection on the culture of\u00a0shanshui<\/em>\u00a0painting, and to develop a more nuanced understanding of the nature of\u00a0shanshui<\/em>\u00a0itself. Through his landscape practice Xu Longsen constructs his own primeval world: and even though the elements of nature illuminated within this world are part of a communal environment, Xu\u2019s realm of landscape is completely different from those realms created by traditional landscape artists, which can be \u2018roamed through and inhabited\u2019. In contrast, Xu\u2019s landscapes loom before the viewer as remote, amorphous scenes anchored in quiet and solitude: these are realms that do not invite entry. Perhaps Xu Longsen\u2019s intention is to subvert the Confucian notion that \u2018The wise love the the water; the benevolent enjoy the mountains\u2019. Instead, perhaps what Xu seeks to create is a kind of response that is in keeping with the Daoist concept that \u2018Heaven and Earth are not benevolent: they treat all creatures as straw dogs\u2019 (i.e. insignificant)[1]<\/a>. The creative forces of Heaven and Earth follow the \u2018method\u2019 of Nature, and the \u2018method\u2019 of \u2018Nature\u2019 goes beyond \u2018the joys of benevolence and wisdom\u2019: it is no more nor less than the eternal cycle of birth and decay. In his \u2018Letter to Zhu Yuansi\u2019, the Southern Dynasties scholar Wu Jun (469-520) wrote:\u00a0Those who aspired to honour and fame and wished to fly as high as eagles would have their minds settled in peace when looking at these elevated peaks. Those who were engaged in mundane affairs would loiter there with no thought of return when gazing at these valleys<\/em>.[2]<\/a><\/strong> Today when we gaze into a realm of landscape, can it be that what we seek as its essential nature is still no more than the pleasure of spiritual roaming and rarefied communal enjoyment? (Translation by Valerie C. Doran)
The Crisis of Landscape<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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