Page 335 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

fig. 2. An Kyon (i4i8-after 1464). Dream Journey to the Peach-Blossom Land. Dated to 1447. Korean. Handscroll; ink and light color on silk. Central Library,
Tenri University, Nara

Japan from his mission to Korea in 1424, it is at visiting Korean delegation, one of whom added dated to 1447, is an original and creative picto-
least possible that the two artists were in con- an inscription to the painting. rial commentary on the north Chinese tradition
tact with each other just before, during, or after The Cleveland Museum's screens bearing of landscape begun by Li Cheng and Guo Xi,
the voyage. seals of Yi Sumun (cat. 267) only exacerbate the maintained in the north by the conquering Jin
The album itself is not clearly related to any problem of identifying Korean works and dynasty, and transmitted to Korea at least in
Chinese or Japanese representations of bamboo. Korean influences. The screens appear to have part through the collection of paintings formed
Certain leaves are related to the handling of the been painted in Japan, for their particular six- by Prince Anp'yong. Although the inscriptions
bamboo in Josetsu's Catfish and Gourd, painted fold format conforms to the developing Japanese on the handscroll describe the work as a depic-
as a screen for the shogun about 1413. Other norm. Also, the cedar and hemlock trees owe tion of Anp'yong's dream, the representation is
leaves recall Chinese Song and Yuan bamboo something to the Japanese Shubun and resemble derived from the famous tale by Tao Yuanming
renditions, but not by mainstream wen ren works usually clustered under the shadowy (365-427), The Haven of the Peach-Blossom
bamboo specialists such as Li Kan or even tradi- name of Soga Jasoku (act. c. 1491). Later Spring, obviously well known to both the
tionalists like Pu-Ming (Xue Chuang). Rather, sources identify Jasoku as a painter, perhaps dreamer and the artist. A classic expression of
Yi Sumun's album recalls the paintings usually even the son of Yi Sumun, working in Echizen the Confucian ideal of an earlier Golden Age,
assigned by the Japanese to "Tan Zhirui," pic- Province (present day Fukui Prefecture), where Peach-Blossom Spring tells of a Shangri-la dis-
torial treatments that emphasize bamboo in Yi came to rest after his arrival in Japan. The covered by a poor fisherman who follows a
wind, rain, moonlight, or a minimal landscape Cleveland screens are unusual in their warm ink stream lined with magically blossoming peach
setting. Yi's markedly personal variations on tones, their pictorial shading of rock and hill trees into a mysterious cave. The cave
this type of bamboo painting include an almost forms, the horizontal emphasis of the overall debouches onto a fertile plain where lies a
geometric and planar patterning of leaves and compositions, the rock projections to the right, pretty and prosperous village, whose inhabi-
even rain, for which this writer knows no and the major use of foreground repoussoirs, tants live in perfect harmony and contentment
precedents. Massed rocks and hills are angled to flat in the left screen and rising in the right according to Confucian precepts. They shower
the viewer's right, a habit also discernible in the one. The rough brushwork and the forced con- the stranger with hospitality but implore him to
screens to be considered next. trasts of ink tones are also unlike Japanese ink keep their existence a secret from the outside
Clearly Korean and Japanese monochrome ink habits of the fifteenth century but similar to world — a request the fisherman promptly
styles are closely related, and future studies most Korean works of this time. All of this, betrays on returning home. Fortunately, neither
must take their relationships into account. Lit- with the evidence of old seals, strongly suggests he nor anyone else finds it possible to retrace
erary ties also exist, notably embodied in the this pair of screens to be significant works by or his steps, and so the fabled land is safe forever
famous, if anonymous, Banana Trees in Night closely associated with Yi Sumun and major (Cyril Birch, ed., Anthology of Chinese Litera-
Rain in the Hinohara collection (Matsushita evidence for the mutual dependence of Korean ture [New York, 1965; reprint 1967], pp. 167-
1974, 51-53). This work, which we still take to and Japanese monochrome ink painting in the 168).
be stylistically typical of early Muromachi ink first half or three quarters of the fifteenth An Kyon painted the bare, steep mountains
painting, was painted to accompany the compo- century. common in the Guo Xi style, using nervous,
sition of Chinese poetry by like-minded souls The dominant Choson landscape style is rep- interlaced linear strokes to bound the rocks and
gathered at Nanzen-ji in Kyoto to celebrate the resented by the works of An Kyon (1418- after mountains. Flat valleys with dry, barren shores
investiture of Yoshimochi as the fourth Ashi- 1464) or those of his school. His masterpiece, penetrate the mountains, creating depth. The
kaga shogun. The gathering included part of a Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land, rational emphasis in this Chinese tradition was

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