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Article

Chen Qingbo  

Chinese, 13th century, male.

Born in Qiantang (Zhejiang).

Painter.

Song dynasty.

Chen Qingbo was a member of the Hangzhou Painting Academy during the Baoyu period (1253-1258). He was a landscape artist and often depicted scenes of West Lake, Hangzhou.

Article

Chen Yi  

Chinese, 15th – 16th century, male.

Born 1469, in Ningpo (Zhejiang); died 1583.

Painter.

Chen Yi was a scholar, calligrapher and landscape artist who lived in Nanjing. He was an admirer of Su Dongpo and a friend of Wen Zhengming.

Article

Cheng Jiasui  

Chinese, 16th – 17th century, male.

Born 1565, in Xiuning (Anhui); died 1643.

Painter. Landscapes.

Cheng Jiasui was a poet and landscape artist who worked in the styles of the great masters of the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368). He lived in Jiading (Jiangsu).

Cologne (Mus. für Ostasiatische Kunst): ...

Article

Kobori Enshū  

Bruce A. Coats

(b Nagahami, Ōmi Prov. [now Shiga Prefect.], 1579; d Fushimi, nr. Kyoto, 1647).

Japanese tea ceremony master, and designer and construction supervisor of numerous palaces, castles, and gardens. He was one of the most influential figures in Japanese art during the early 17th century. He is noted for the courtly refinement of his designs, which were elegant yet understated, innovative yet respectful of traditions. Few of the many buildings and gardens attributed to him remain in their original form, but his style is found throughout much of Japan. A disciple in his youth of Furuta Oribe, he practiced an elaborate style of tea ceremony, and his name has become associated with a tea-room design that is spacious and luxurious without being ostentatious.

Enshū’s father, Kobori Masatsugu (d 1604), was a samurai who served the military leaders Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616) as castle architect and construction supervisor. In 1596 Enshū assisted Masatsugu with work on Fushimi Castle (completed ...

Article

Fang Congyi  

Chinese, 14th century, male.

Active during the second half of the 14th century.

Born in Guixi (Jiangxi).

Painter.

Fang Congyi, a Taoist monk at the Shangqing temple in his native province, is known as a landscape artist and for his spontaneous, splashy style and his rapid execution with a loaded brush. He gives a very subtle rendering of misty landscapes. Highly appreciated in his time, his style is reminiscent of that of the great landscape painter Gao Kegong (c....

Article

Fu Mei  

Chinese, 17th century, male.

Born 1628; died 1682.

Painter.

Fu Mei was the son of the painter Fu Shan (1605-1684). Like his father, he was a poet, calligrapher and seal carver, but above all a landscape artist, known for the atmosphere evoked in his paintings....

Article

Gao Jian  

Chinese, 17th century, male.

Born 1634, in Suzhou (Jiangsu); died 1708.

Painter. Landscapes.

Gao Jian is known as a landscape artist.

Beijing (Palace Mus.): River Landscape with Wooded Hills (colour)

London (British Mus.): Landscape in Autumn Rain (signed and dated 1694)

Article

Gao Yang  

Chinese, 17th century, male.

Activec.1623-1631.

Born in Siming (Zhejiang).

Painter, draughtsman. Landscapes, architectural views, gardens, birds, flowers.

Gao Yang was the son-in-law of Zhao Bei. He painted mostly flowers, birds and rocks, but towards the end of his career also produced landscapes.

Cologne (Mus. für Ostasiatische Kunst): ...

Article

Garden rocks and scholar’s rocks  

Kemin Hu

[gongshi guan shang shi]

Naturally occurring rock formations used for decorating gardens and scholars’ studios. They have long been appreciated, as well as respected, by ancient Chinese men of letters for their graceful shapes and extraordinarily refined flavor. Literati consider these natural stones either as brothers, friends, or as mentors, embodying the Daoist doctrine of “harmony between man and nature” to the fullest.

There is a noted saying in China that “A garden without rocks is not graceful, and a studio without stone lacks elegance.” Chinese gardens are poetic and picturesque, focusing on exhibiting the beauty of mountains and rivers in miniature scale. The recorded history of stone appreciation in China dates back to the Tang dynasty (628–907). Normally, a Chinese garden will have some Taihu (“Lake Tai”) stones as main peaks, which are exquisite and abundantly perforated, resulting from thousands of years of water erosion and weathering. The four most famous garden stones with a peak shape that have survived since the Song dynasty (...

Article

Gardens in East and Southeast Asia  

Jae Hoon Chung, Bruce A. Coats, Stanislaus Fung, Tan Tanaka, Nora Taylor, and William Warren

See also Garden

The prototype of the garden in East Asia can be traced back to the Zhou period (c. 1050–256 bc) in China. According to inscriptions on bones and carapaces, kings had already begun hunting in enclosed parks, where rare animals and birds were kept. Such enclosed areas were the origin of the tradition of the royal or imperial park (see §I, 1, (ii) below). In the Han period (206 bcad 220), another type of garden was developed: the private gardens owned by the aristocracy and the wealthy. During the reign of Emperor Wudi (reg 141–87 bc) of the Han dynasty, a garden layout was created with a pond in the centre containing artificial mountains symbolizing the islands of Penglai, Fangzhang, and Yingzhou—supposedly the abode of the Daoist Immortals. This garden design also influenced gardens in Korea and Japan (see...

Article

Japan: Bonsai  

Jerald P. Stowell

Bonsai, ‘the art of miniature trees’, is a horticultural art form that attained its highest development in Japan. The term bonsai (Jap. bon, a shallow tray or pot; sai, to plant; both singular and plural) refers both to a technique of growing and training trees or shrubs, herbs and grasses in ceramic containers so as to create artistic objects and to the miniature trees themselves. Bonsai plants should possess all the beauty and simplicity of plants found in their natural environment, although they are only a fraction of the normal size (in general, between 50 and 1000 mm high).

The plants are arranged in artistic compositions or scenes designed to give an illusion of natural landscape and to reproduce the dignified beauty of trees, herbs or grasses that have survived long exposure to the forces of nature. Bonsai also express spiritual concepts in objective form: the art or ‘way’ of bonsai (...

Article

Japan: Flower arrangement  

Elizabeth Palmer

The Japanese art of ikebana (from ikeru, ‘to keep alive’, and hana, ‘flowers’), also known as kadō (the way of flowers), involves the arrangement of flowers and branches. Although the custom of offering flowers at shrines and the use of flowers for decoration are universal, ikebana has, since the 15th century (see §2 below), developed into a unique and undisputed art form that is also a spiritual discipline. Ikebana artists explore the relationship between man and nature in a changing world. Characteristic are the attention given to the selection of plant materials, the technical skills involved in fixing these securely in an appropriate container and the artistic skills required to assess their relationship to each other and to the surrounding space. In the 20th century ikebana spread world-wide and, particularly since 1960, underwent radical changes.

Ikebana arrangements generally display the following characteristics. The focal point, from which the arrangement is designed to be viewed, is outside the arrangement itself. The three-dimensional arrangement has an asymmetric balance, with the material being placed off-centre, reaching forwards and upwards. Space (...

Article

Jōruriji  

Bruce A. Coats

[Kūtaiji; Kūdaiji; Kubonji]

Buddhist temple and garden near Nara in the Sōraku District, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. It is a temple of the Pure Land (Jōdo) sect of Esoteric Buddhism. The present compound contains a honden (main hall), a pagoda and a pond garden. Alone among Pure Land temples, Jōruriji retains its original 12th-century garden designed to look like the Western Paradise. Temple records indicate that the temple was established in 1047 with the construction of a honden dedicated to Yakushi (Skt Bhaishajyaguru; the Buddha of healing). It was reconstructed in 1107 as a hall for the worship of Amida (Skt Amitabha; Buddha of the Western Paradise) and moved to its present position in 1157.

The Amida Hall (Amidadō) stands on the western side of the pond. It is a wooden post-and-beam structure in the yosemune zukuri (‘hipped-gable roof construction’) format, 11 bays long and 4 bays deep, and is the only extant example of a ...

Article

Kairakuen  

Bruce A. Coats

[Jap.: ‘garden with a multitude of pleasures’]

Japanese garden in the city of Mito, Ibaraki Prefecture. Together with the Kōrakuen in Okayama (see Okayama, §2) and the Kenrokuen in Kanazawa (see Kanazawa, §2, (ii)), it is considered one of Japan’s three notable daimyo gardens. In 1665 Tokugawa Mitsukuni (1628–1700), the second-generation head of the Mito branch of the Tokugawa family, rulers of Japan during the Edo period (1600–1868), created a pond garden on the site, which imitated the famous Western Lake in China. He also constructed the Kōchintei (Pavilion of Deep Contemplation). The present Kairakuen was created as a private garden by Tokugawa Nariaki (1800–60), the ninth-generation Mito head. It was completed in 1842 and named Kairakuen.

The Kairakuen site, originally 33,487 tsuba (110,478 sq. m), consists of several low hills and broad valleys densely planted with trees, especially ume (Japanese plum). Nariaki reportedly brought 10,000 ume...

Article

Noguchi, Isamu  

Joan H. Pachner

(b Los Angeles, CA, Nov 17, 1904; d New York, Dec 30, 1988).

American sculptor and designer. He was the son of an American writer mother and Japanese poet father and was brought up in Japan (1906–18) before being sent to the USA to attend high school in Indiana (1918–22). In 1922 he moved to Connecticut, where he was apprenticed to the sculptor Gutzon Borglum (1867–1941). Discouraged by Borglum, Noguchi moved to New York and enrolled to study medicine at Columbia University (1923–5). From 1924 he attended evening classes at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School; encouraged by the school’s director, he decided to become a sculptor. In addition he frequented avant-garde galleries, including Alfred Stieglitz’s An American Place and the New Art Circle of J. B. Neumann; he was particularly impressed by the Brancusi exhibition at the Brummer Gallery (1926).

In 1927 and 1928 he was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships to visit the Far East, but he went to Paris instead. For six months he worked as ...

Article

Park  

Vivian A. Rich

Outdoor place of relaxation and recreation. Parks originated at about the same time, during the 2nd millennium bc, in the ancient Middle East and China as an enclosed hunting reserve for kings and the nobility. Parks remained private recreation grounds until the Industrial Revolution in 19th-century Europe, when social pressures and the need for urban reform led to the creation of parks open to all members of society for social and educational benefits.

The earliest record of a park is that of Tukulti-apil-esharra I (Tiglath-Pileser, King of Assyria; reg 1115–1076 bc), who c. 1100 bc stocked his parks with trees brought from conquered countries. Parks filled with exotic trees and animals became part of the Assyrian cultural heritage. The Assyrian empire fell in the 6th century bc to the Persians, whose parks resembled those of their Assyrian predecessors in design and were used for riding and hunting. Whereas in Persia the park was enjoyed only by the nobility, many of the royal parks of ...

Article

Sasaki, Hideo  

Leslie Luebbers

(b Reedley, CA, Nov 25, 1919; d Walnut Creek, CA, Aug 30, 2000).

American landscape architect and educator. Sasaki taught from 1953 to 1970 at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (HGSD), where he was chairman of the landscape architecture department from 1958 to 1968. In 1953, Sasaki also opened his design practice, which, after several name changes (including Sasaki, Walker and Associates (1959–63), with former student Peter Walker, and Sasaki, Dawson, DeMay Associates (1963–75), with former student Stuart O. Dawson and architect Kenneth DeMay) and its growth from a handful of recent landscape architecture graduates to an interdisciplinary staff of 300 partners and employees, became (after 1975) simply Sasaki Associates, the firm that carries his name and philosophy throughout the world.

The son of Japanese immigrants who farmed in the San Joaquin Valley, Sasaki grew up with an appreciation of the relationship between nature and human endeavor. After Pearl Harbor and before he completed his city planning degree at the University of California, Berkeley, he was caught in the mass internment of Japanese-Americans. Sasaki earned a BFA in landscape architecture in ...

Article

Musō Sōseki  

Bruce A. Coats

(b Ise Prov. [now in Mie Prefect.], 1275; d Kyoto, 1351).

Japanese Zen master, poet, scholar and garden designer. As spiritual adviser to both Emperor GoDaigo (reg 1318–39) and the military leaders who overthrew him, Musō was politically influential and acted as mediator during the civil wars of the 1330s. At various times in his life Musō served as abbot of Nanzenji, one of the various Gozan (Five Mountains) Zen monasteries including Nanzenji in Kyoto (see Nanzenji). The support of both imperial and shogunal courts enabled him to found many new Rinzai Zen temples. He was instrumental in popularizing Zen teachings, though also criticized for the secularization of some Zen institutions. Three times during his life and four times posthumously he was given the honorific title kokushi (National Master).

Musō began Buddhist studies at the age of three. Although his early training was in the Esoteric Tendai and Shingon doctrines, attraction to Zen brought him to Kamakura, where he received instruction from the Japanese disciples of distinguished Chinese Chan (Jap. Zen) monks, including Kōhō Kennichi (...

Article

Suzhou [Su-chou; Soochow] gardens  

Alison Hardie

The city of Suzhou, in Jiangsu province, East China, an important cultural and economic center since at least the 10th century ce, has become known as the location of a number of historic and aesthetically admired gardens, of which nine are now listed by UNESCO as world heritage sites.

The city of Suzhou was founded in 514 bce, according to traditional accounts, as the capital of the state of Wu. However, it was not until the period from the late Tang to the very early Song dynasty (9th–10th centuries ce) that the shift of the preponderance of China’s population from north to south gave rise to significant economic and cultural growth in Suzhou. This ensured the surplus production essential for the conversion of fertile agricultural land to largely non-productive gardens in the area, while the development of irrigation and water conservation essential to productive rice-growing also contributed to the development of gardens. In the Southern Song (...

Article

Tsuki Katsura  

Bruce A. Coats

Japanese residential garden in Hōfu (Yamaguchi Prefect.). It was laid out in 1712 by the poet, tea master and Zen practitioner Katsura Tadaharu, a member of the Mōri clan that governed the area. Tadaharu was familiar with the many great Zen gardens of Kyoto, and Tsuki Katsura is unusual in the history of Japanese gardens (see Garden §VI 3.) as a residential garden whose bold design was strongly influenced by Zen Buddhism. The name Tsuki Katsura (‘moon cinnamon’) is derived from the Chinese fable that describes the shadows on the surface of the moon as a rabbit standing beneath a cinnamon tree, and a Zen koan (riddle) from the Blue Cliff Record (Chin. Bi yan lu; Jap. Hekiganroku; late 11th century–early 12th), which deals with the inexplicable nature of wisdom.

The garden is L-shaped and encloses the main house on its southern and eastern fronts. It is bounded by a low, yellow plastered wall, raised on a cut-stone base edged with moss and capped by clay tiles. These varied textures are important, since the only other elements are rough boulders, raked gravel and tiny patches of lichen. Nineteen stones, nearly all of which have flat tops, are set into a gravel bed, while one monolith in the shape of a crescent moon is set on a small stone base in the south-east corner. The horizontality of the wall, rocks and raked gravel gives the space a dynamic flow. The only vertical features are the crescent-shaped stone and the nearby rock at which it points. Together they create a visual tension that balances the corner where they stand. The stark simplicity of the space, which is softened only by the trees outside, and the dramatic placement of the stones give Tsuki Katsura a haunting, enigmatic quality. More like a sculptural display than a garden, it had a strong influence on late 20th-century Japanese landscape design....