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  • Domesticated Landscapes of Li Gonglin:A View from the Anthropocene
  • De-nin D. Lee

The Song dynasty was a time of much cultural florescence, and among the most enduring achievements is landscape painting. Through the efforts of many scholars, we understand that landscape painting has roots in religious practices and philosophical beliefs.1 Furthermore, politics and society shaped the growth of landscape painting, which communicated the agendas of scholars, aristocrats, and emperors and their kin.2 Finally, Song artists themselves are credited with artistic invention and technical refinement in the making of landscapes that have become icons in the history of art.3 The [End Page 139] research makes clear the religious, philosophical, social, political and artistic dimensions of landscape, and so it should be apparent that landscape is a form of human artifice. Yet, there remains a persistent and, in the current context of environmental degradation and climate change, troubling connection drawn between landscape painting and the belief that a harmonious relationship between humans and nature prevailed in pre-modern China.4 This study examines landscape paintings from a point of view informed by the concept of the Anthropocene in order to consider directly and explicitly the traffic between images and lands. Mountain Villa 山莊圖 by Northern Song artist and scholar, Li Gonglin 李公麟 (ca. 1041–1106), serves as a point of departure for examining domesticated landscapes and the overlooked role they played in the history of landscape painting. (Figures 1a–1c and 2–4)

Before proceeding further, the term Anthropocene and its application here should be clarified. A term coined by ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer and promoted by atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen, the Anthropocene refers to the current period of time in which human activities have become so profound and widespread as to leave a global mark in the geologic record of the entire planet.5 Some who advocate the adoption of the Anthropocene as a geologic epoch date its beginning to the nuclear age, others to the invention of the steam engine. Considering widespread deforestation, ecological disruption, and monumental redirection of waterways, a sinocentric point of view might claim a yet earlier starting point. But regardless of the precise dating, all would agree that human activities have so disrupted earth's cycles of water, air, and soil so as to threaten the very systems that support human life.

Although the scientific community has been galvanized to study causes and effects of anthropogenic activities on eco-systems, scholarship in the humanities, too, has a role. Addressing the field of Asian Studies, Mark Hudson asserts that the Anthropocene "… demands new ways of looking at Nature [End Page 140]


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Figure 1a–c.

Parts 1, 2, and 3, "Entry," section of Mountain Villa. Copy after ca. 1085 Li Gonglin. Berenson Collection, Villa I Tatti, Florence. Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College, by Paolo De Rocco, Centrica S.r.l., Florence, reproduced with permission.

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Figure 2.

Figure 2. Copy after ca. 1085 Li Gonglin original. "Lodge of Establishing Virtue," section of Mountain Villa. Berenson Collection, Villa I Tatti, Florence. Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College, by Paolo De Rocco, Centrica S.r.l., Florence, reproduced with permission.


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Figure 3.

Copy after ca. 1085 Li Gonglin original. "Jade Dragon Gorge, Guanyin Cliff," section of Mountain Villa. Berenson Collection, Villa I Tatti, Florence. Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College, by Paolo De Rocco, Centrica S.r.l., Florence, reproduced with permission.

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Figure 4.

Copy after ca. 1085 Li Gonglin original. "Precious Blossom Cliff," section of Mountain Villa. Berenson Collection, Villa I Tatti, Florence. Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College Paolo De Rocco, Centrica S.r.l., Florence, reproduced with permission.

and the Human. …"6 Eco–art history, as a subfield of art history, asks us to take into consideration the dynamic interactions and mutual impacts of human cultures and earth's systems when interpreting art.7 In the field of Song painting, such an approach has been demonstrated most visibly in the work of Heping Liu. Using The...

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