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Chinese Gardens • In a Chinese garden, all components complement each other (or at least should be reflected in garden designs) without losing individuality of each element such as rocks, water, plants, architecture or literature. In addition, a thoughtful garden has also taken into consideration its relation to its environment. At a philosophical level, an ideal Chinese garden serves as a metaphor for an ideal human society in which a community doesn’t assert its “tyranny of the majority” as phrased by John Stuart Mill.[1] Explain how Chinese gardens make a cultural, philosophical, and artistic statement. • [1] John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, reprinted from The Harvard Classics, vol. 25 (New York: Collier, 1909). A copy of the work is on the website for this course: http://uwch-4.humanities.washington.edu/~188/ 188 Texts/
British philosopher, economist, moral and political theorist, and administrator, was the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century. The overall aim of his philosophy is to develop a positive view of the universe and the place of humans in it, one which contributes to the progress of human knowledge, individual freedom and human well-being. John Stuart Mill(1806-1873)
Figure-ground articulation (Definition) • The figure has an object-like character, whereas the ground has less perceptual saliency and appears as 'mere' background. The areas of the figure and the ground usually do not appear juxtaposed in a common plane, as in a mosaic, but rather as stratified in depth.
Focal Point/EmphasisFlowers and Leaves • Definition: A focal point is the element in a painting that pulls in the viewer's eye, that is the center of attention or the main subject. You can emphasize a focal point through the painting's composition, through color, and through the range of tones you use.
“Find the Moth” 39Ralph A. Clevenger/Corbis Images 16Figure-Ground Contrast Blurred/Blended
Figure-Ground Contrast/SwitchIts Philosophical implications • Rubin's vase (sometimes known as the Rubin face or the Figure-ground vase) is a famous set of cognitive optical illusions developed around 1915 by the Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin.
Duck or Rabbit?Illustration of a "duckrabbit," discussed in the Philosophical Investigations, section XI, part II by Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1953 • An ambiguous figure in which the brain switches between seeing a rabbit and a duck. The duck-rabbit was "originally noted" by American psychologist Joseph Jastrow (Jastrow 1899, p. 312; 1900; see also Brugger and Brugger 1993).
Sky & Water I, 1938 Birds or Fish?M. C. Escher(17 June 1898 – 27 March 1972) • "In the horizontal center strip there are birds and fish equivalent to each other. We associate flying with sky, and so for each of the black birds the sky in which it is flying is formed by the four white fish which encircle it. Similarly swimming makes us think of water, and therefore the four black birds that surround a fish become the water in which it swims."M.C.E.
The Steerage is a photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1907. It has been hailed as one of the greatest photographs of all time because it captures in a single image both a formative document of its time and one of the first works of artistic modernism. The SteerageAlfred StieglitzComplementary or Competitive?
Complementary vs. Competitive • Chapter 2 (Tao Te Ching) • Thus Something and Nothing produce each other; • The difficult and the easy complement each other; • The long and the short off-set each other; • The high and the low incline towards each other; • Note and sound harmonize each other; • Before and after follow each other. • To setoff: something used to enhance the effect of another thing by contrasting it, as an ornament.
Without an Other there is no Self, without Self no choosing one thing rather than another (99) Liezi could ride the wind and had a good time flying for 15 days. But he still had to depend on something to get around (98). Are Individual accomplishments truly individual? Zhuangzi online
Types of Chinese Gardens • 1. Royal Gardens: Summer Palace; Beihai Park; Jingshan Park (Hill of Prospect); • The Imperial Summer Resort -承德避暑山庄 (The Mountain Resort and its Outlying Temples, Chengde) • 2. Private Scholar Gardens: Yu Yuan and Zhuozheng Yuan • 3. Natural Gardens: Seattle Chinese Garden in south Seattle modeled on Sichuan natural gardens
颐和园【Yíhéyuán】 the Summer Palace (in Beijing, modeled on the West Lake in Hangzhou). The lake and the hill is half man-made. The Longevity Hill is a branch of the Western Hills in Beijing. Western Hills are most famous for red leaves. The best season to see the scene is in the fall, especially after the first frost hit the red leaves (late October, early November). The Summer PalaceThe Marble Boat vs. a Strong Navy
Ci Xi’s 60th Birthday • Embezzled the fund for building a strong army for her birthday celebration; • China lost its first Sino-Japanese War (1894 to 1895) over who could dominate the Korean Peninsula; • The result is China lost Taiwan to Japanese who did not return it until 1945, then the National Party; • Taiwan, the biggest island, is nicknamed as the “Treasure Island”;
The Marble Boat • The Marble Boat, also known as the Boat of Purity and Ease (清晏舫 Qing Yan Fǎng) is a lakeside pavilion on the ground of the Summer Palace in Beijing, China. • Emperor Qian Long (1736 to 1795) wrote a poem to describe its symbolic significance: Never Sinking with stability
Scale—magnificent/ “Mathematically sublime”– Immanuel Kant The Han fu inherited from the Chu poems the sao-style prosody (chap.2 in How to Read Chinese Poetry) See the DVD Rhapsody or Fu, best executed by Sima Xiangru and Yang Xiong in the Han dynasty; Read “Shanglin Fu” or “Fu on the Imperial Park” by Sima Xiangru online 司马相如《上林赋》 The Royal Gardens and Han fuRoyal gardens are like Han Fu
Ebrey on royal gardens • “The emperor, as guardian of the realm, sought to demonstrate a harmonious relationship with and an intimate knowledge of the forces of nature. The imperial parks were vast in territory and kept an abundance of all imaginable plants and animals, almost like a museum. Such parks replicated the emperor's realm in miniature, with man-made lakes and mountains often corresponding to real geographical features. They reinforced the emperor's role as the Son of Heaven. By the Tang dynasty, a tradition of painting the royal hunting parks as paradise landscapes had developed. This gradually came to be applied to representations of landscapes in general.” • http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/home/3garhist.htm
Chéng dé bì shǔ shān zhuāng 承 德 避 暑 山 庄The Imperial Summer Resort
Suzhou famous for its refined private scholar gardens • Garden construction reached a peak during the Ming and Qing dynasties, as landholding aristocratic and scholar elite families moved their main residences from the countryside to urban and suburban areas of southern cities. Suzhou in particular became a place of refined culture, renowned for its canals and mild climate, as well as the ready availability of garden building expertise.
Humble Administrator's Garden拙政园, Suzhou, Wang Xianchen 王献臣, 1506; Lu Guimeng 618～907, a Tang Poet’s Residence“Mother of Chinese Gardens”
盆景【pénjǐng】 <art> potted landscape; miniature trees and rockery. • Sometime during the Tang dynasty, miniature landscapes in trays (or penjing), composed of rocks, plants and water, began to take the place of the censers (see above). These small-scale landscapes still retained their otherworldly associations. Especially favored were highly contorted rock and plant specimens. Scholars often kept these dwarfed landscapes on their desks, and one Tang dynasty court magician was said to have cultivated the ability to disappear into his tray landscape at will. Collecting unusual rock and plant specimens became common literati pastimes from the Song Dynasty onward.
Components in a Chinese GardenComplement each otherSymbolism in each component
Natural Internal Framesin garden designs • Hidden views • Indirectness in garden designs • Borrowed views • Fountain/Mountain’ Captain at UW
Pines Bamboos Wintersweet 岁寒三友[suìhánsānyǒu] 1. [成语] thethreeplantswhichthrive in cold weather—the pine, thebamboo, andtheplum Three Friends in Cold Seasons岁寒三友
Painting of Three Friends in Cold seasons by Zhao Mengjian宋趙孟堅《歲寒三友圖》
Spring/Orchid 春兰 Summer/Bamboo 夏竹 Autumn/ Chrysanthemum秋菊 Winter/ Wintersweet冬梅 “Four Gentlemen” among Flowerstheir symbolic significance
Our knowledge is partial; Actions based on the partial knowledge will entail consequences Humility Bamboos always have room for more… Scenes are forever changing: Different flowers in different seasons; Same plants and tress but with different colors in different seasons; One Can Never See the Whole Scene of a Chinese Garden
Sublime vs. BeautifulKant, in 1764Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. • In aesthetics, the sublime (from the Latin sublimis ([looking up from] under the lintel, high, lofty, elevated, exalted) is the quality of greatness or vast magnitude, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness with which nothing else can be compared and which is beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement or imitation.
Kant on the Beautiful • Immanuel Kant developed a theory of aesthetic judgment in his Critique of The Power of Judgment (1790), that concentrates on how it is that we make the claim that a work of art is beautiful. That is not the same thing as a claim that we like it, that it pleases us, or that the claim pertains only to ourselves. Instead, Kant argues, when we say of a thing that it is beautiful, we expect everyone else to agree--and if they do not, it is because they have failed to understand the form of purposiveness that the work displays.
Subjective vs. Objective • That means that just looking at an object is not enough: an aesthetic judgment is not like saying that you like pancakes or peaches or the color red. Those are judgments of sense, and they pertain only to the person who happens to like those things. In the same way, the reason we claim that something is beautiful is not because it has certain properties or qualities. An object judged to be beautiful can have any qualities whatsoever (shape, color, texture, etc.). When we say that something is beautiful, we have to carry out a thoughtful and accurate analysis of it: we see that its form is purposive. It is no accident that all the details of the work (a poem, a painting, a novel, an essay) are exactly as they are. When we understand exactly how the work is integrated, and why it is exactly as it is, then and only then are we entitled to say that it is beautiful, and we make the claim in the expectation that anyone who understands it will agree.
An Intelligent Transformation • As Mr. Butchart exhausted the limestone in the quarry near their house, his enterprising wife, Jennie, conceived an unprecedented plan for refurbishing the bleak pit. From farmland nearby she requisitioned tons of top soil, had it brought to Tod Inlet by horse and cart, and used it to line the floor of the abandoned quarry. Little by little, under Jennie Butchart's supervision, the abandoned quarry blossomed into the spectacular Sunken Garden.
Contrast the breathtaking sunken garden with the delicate Japanese garden. Then you will suddenly understand what it means to be mathematically sublime as defined by Kant. Delicate Miniature Petite Well manicured The Sublime and the BeautifulChinese Royal Gardens (sublime) vs. Chinese Scholar Gardens (delicate)
Chinese Garden at MET, New York • The Chinese Garden Court at The Metropolitan Museum of Art • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C92bYFQDTzA • DVDs
http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/home/3garintr.htm • Professor Ebrey on Chinese Gardens: • “Garden design was an art in China. One of the most common ways to make a Chinese home more elegant was to develop one or more compounds into a garden with plants, rocks, and garden buildings. Gardens were especially appreciated for their great beauty and naturalness. In time, garden design came to be regarded as a refined activity for the well-heeled and well-educated.”
Fengshui (wind-and-water, or geomancy) • Fengshui (or wind-and-water, or geomancy) also played a large role in the form a garden would take. The natural environment was interpreted by the fengshui master as a living organism, the alteration of which could positively or negatively affect the lives of people in contact with it for generations to come. • 风水【fēngshuǐ】 the location of a house or tomb,supposed to have an influence on the fortune of a family; geomantic omen.
