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Course: Art of Asia > Unit 2
Lesson 13: Song dynasty (960–1279)- Song dynasty (960–1279), an introduction
- The art of salvation—Mt. Baoding, Dazu rock carvings
- An Introduction to the Song dynasty (960–1279)
- Master of the (Fishing) Nets Garden
- Gu Kaizhi, Nymph of the Luo River
- Chinese landscape painting
- Mountings: hanging scrolls, handscrolls, fans and the album leaf
- Neo-Confucianism & Fan Kuan, Travelers by Streams and Mountains
- Emperor Huizong, Auspicious Cranes, handscroll
- Attributed to Zhang Zeduan, Along the River during Qingming Festival, handscroll
- Liang Kai, Poet Strolling by a Marshy Bank
- Liang Kai (attributed), White Egret
- Ding ware bowl, Northern Song dynasty
- Ceramic pillow
- Guan ware long-necked vase
- Bowl with “oil spot” glaze
- Bowl with brown mottling
- Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara (Chinese: Guanyin)
- Arhat (Chinese: luohan)
- “Bodhisattva of Compassion Seated in Royal Ease”
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Master of the (Fishing) Nets Garden
The Master of the (Fishing) Nets Garden in Suzhou, China was originally designed by Shi Zhengzhi, a 12th century official during the Southern Song Dynasty. He named the garden, Yu Yin, the Fisherman's Retreat. Song Zonghuan, an the 18th century court official renamed and restored the garden. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Astor Court in New York is a replica of one section of the Master of the Nets Garden.
Speakers: Dr. Kristen Chiem and Dr. Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- It looks like that this took a long time and hard work. Would you do it?(1 vote)
- kinda wish I have a house like this(1 vote)
Video transcript
(piano music) - [Steven] We've walked
through a warren of back alleys to find the
entranceway to what was once a private garden in the city of Suzhou, known as the Master of the Fishing Nets. - [Kristen] The name was inspired by this idyllic life of a fisherman, that name came later,
came in the 18th century, but the site itself dates
to the 12th century. - [Steven] Back to the
southern Song dynasty, but this is a garden that
has been continuously reworked over the years. Now we should say that a
contemplative Chinese garden is not what we think of in the West when we think of the formal
gardens of Versailles, for example, or the lush overgrown gardens of the manor houses in England. This is completely man-made. - [Kristen] And this was a place where people lived, it's an estate. - [Steven] The modern city of Suzhou has more than 50 surviving gardens, in part because this area
has always been an important place of commerce and great wealth, but also because it is
steeped historically in highly intellectual culture. - [Kristen] Suzhou is known as the ancient region of Wu. This idea of Suzhou as a grand canal city was also very important, it
was a place that was in between networks of trade, and the
city profited over the years, and still even today
as one of the prominent economic cities in China. - [Steven] The Grand Canal
links north and south, and it was one the great
engineering feats of ancient China. - [Kristen] And through the Ming dynasty it was still a bustling center for trade, very cosmopolitan city. - [Steven] So the idea of a garden within a metropolis is a place of respite, it's a place of contemplation, it's a place into which one can retreat. - [Kristen] To call it a garden, it's hard to see that
on the first few steps, you see built spaces, walls and buildings, glimpses of courtyards along either side, - [Steven] It's important to understand that the garden is in
fact fully constructed. There is nothing natural
here, everything is planned, everything is purposeful. As we enter into the
garden we move through a series of halls, that is small buildings punctuated by even smaller courtyards, creating a rhythm of enclosed
open enclosed spaces. - [Kristen] We progress through these different structures, the reception halls, we get glimpses of the natural world as it's drawn in through
windows and doors. - [Steven] We've just walked northward through a series of buildings
and a series of courtyards, and we've entered into our
first really open space. It's this beautiful
interior court that is paved with a begonia pattern, and then there are small
islands in the corner of rocks, of plantings, and
when you look at the bamboo for example, having looked at
so many Chinese ink paintings, when I look at these leaves, I almost see the individual strokes of the paintbrush. - [Kristen] They draw
you back to the rocks, these vertical stone slabs,
these are bamboo rocks, they look like stalks of bamboo, following your eye down to
a cluster of long leaves of grass that seem to
echo that verticality. - [Steven] And then we have
these wonderful grottoes, these rocks that are perforated, pierced with all these wonderful nooks, they're incredibly complicated,
they've been carved naturally by the water in Lake Tai, but have been enhanced by the hand of the man who constructed this garden. - [Kristen] We have texts
on constructing gardens that date to the 17th century. This idea of crafting a garden, how many groupings, how many rocks, which way they should lay, all of this was laid out very carefully. - [Steven] So this idea that a garden is a natural place is not quite right, this is a distillation of
the qualities of nature, that have been made more
potent, very much the way that a painting will pick
and choose elements of nature to create a specific kind of composition, and in fact when we look
at some of the plantings against this beautiful dirty
white wall with its cracks, we get a sense of the two dimensionality of Chinese landscape painting. - [Kristen] It's really a
presentation of contrasts, it allows you to see these variations. - [Steven] There are so
many contemplative aspects here, because you see the
changes of the seasons in the foliage, but then
you also have a sense of the eternity suggested by
the great age of the rocks that are here. This is
rock that has been sculpted by water over eons, that things change but at different scales of time. - [Kristen] These very old rocks and these very young
tender branches of bamboo, then the garden look entirely different from week to week and month
to month of every year. - [Steven] We've moved
into the northern part of the garden, which is associated with intellectual pursuits, and in fact, we're in Five Peaks Library. - [Kristen] So, first
we've gone from this area that's very public to now
the very private area, the very contemplative
realm of the garden. We see windows that open to
big views of stone gardens, rockery, and walls that
are ornamented with trees, with foliage, with
windows, glimpses through to the other buildings. - [Steven] It's true this hall, the Five Peaks Library, is
surrounded on its two long sides by rockeries with immense stones, and the stones here feel
powerful, it feels concentrated, it feels a little more intense, this would be a great place to
study, to read and to write. We've just rounded a
bend, and looked through a wooden doorway, through a moon gate, into this wonderful surprise, this pond in the center of the garden. - [Kristen] This is only about an acre, this entire garden, quite small, but it's so artfully presented. We go from even just looking at the ground that we're walking on,
these rocks that are laid, in patterns of triangles and hexagonals, and then we step up
and over a little ledge which is part of a moon window, leading us into this
organic realm of the pond - [Steven] I love the
fact that paving changes from courtyard to
courtyard, and in this case what almost look like
shards of broken glass are reflected in the
latticework of the doors that frame that courtyard. We've walked around the edge of the pond into a little six-sided pavilion, that seems to cantilever over the water. - [Kristen] It seems like the water is so expansive, creeping
and meandering beneath the buildings, and they
seem to float on top of it. This particular pavilion is
named in reference to a poem, and the verse that it recalls reads, The twilight brings the autumn And the breeze sends the moon here. So this idea of the end of the
day, the darkening of autumn. - [Steven] I love the ephemeral evocation, and also the literary
reference that the pond is referring back to
literature which would be known by the people that would
inhabit this space. - [Kristen] Every one of the buildings, every one of the views, all
of the sights all have names. You'll see buildings inscribed
with poetic couplets, we'll see rocks with hints at verses, this connection between all of the media that we've been studying. - [Steven] And we spent the last few days looking at ink painting,
and it really helps me see the compositions that are intended here. Throughout the architecture of the garden there are framed windows,
there are screens that set up very particular views in this miniaturized intensified landscape. - [Kristen] Along one side of the pond would be the area where
intellectual activities would take place. Down to the other side would
be more for social areas, you can see larger halls,
spaces where perhaps poems would be read, where
painting might be appreciated, where guests might come to hear music. - [Steven] Although the garden of course is three-dimensional, there
is that collapsing of space with rocks and foliage
against those white walls, creating a kind of two-dimensionality, and yet at the same time,
we're asked to wander up paths that rise up into rock formations so that we can get views and begin to see this very small garden
from a whole different set of perpsectives. You get the sense that the
people who designed this garden over generations were intensifying
the qualities of nature in order to provoke a kind
of intensified creativity for their own literature,
for their own poetry, and for their own painting. So if the garden functions as a refuge, what were the creators of this garden protecting themselves from, what were they turning their backs away from? - [Kristen] Oftentimes these were sites of retirement, of course
they're sites of leisure, they're private worlds of these scholars, places for them to entertain their guests and to meet with others. They often had careers at court. Some of them in other
contexts were merchants, in this case most of the
hands that this passed through they were officials. This idea of having this
Confucian self cultivation, this idea of perfecting your calligraphy, the things that they had been studying since they were young children, sitting for their examinations, trying to get into the civil service, cultivating that lifelong talent, and then writing to each other, admiring calligraphy
and painting together. - [Steven] But it wasn't just about skill, it was moral cultivation,
that calligraphy, literature, the making of gardens,
the making of paintings, these were all things that
helped one perfect oneself to rise to a a higher level. (piano music)