文徵明，《意远台》，1533年。

勾画中国园林中有形/无形的路径

“绘画必须超越其形”，张彦远（1）

“然而，也有人出于好意，担心游客无法理解呈现在他们面前的东西，在熊猫馆前放置大型人造池塘或粘土熊猫，就像大型广告一样。” 陈从周1984年（2）

这是一篇简短的散文，但将会勾勒出有关南方文人私家花园中非视觉因素独特重要性的思考。“速写“作为一种朦胧和模糊的概念，本身就被古代文人所尊崇与升华。在此，我希望提供更加宏观的视角。无论其是否与现实相符，就像文徵明颇启发灵感的《意远台》一样，绘画对象立于悬崖边上，望着拙政园内不可能存在的广阔湖泊和山脉。或许这恰恰是重点。

园林的美学质量和基础已经确立，建筑、山石、水源和植物精心融合，景观之间的连贯结合，就像是一幅风景画卷在眼前展开，或者可以说“在画中穿行“。在这些景色中，“借景”的行为常常通过仔细地对园林之外的景观进行（重新）构建，而被赋予特殊的地位。然而，正如澳大利亚作家冯士泰对计成的经典园林所述：“《园冶》要求设计师将重新诠释作为创作的过程。并不提供借景的方法，而是一种设计思维过程的方法……其中暗含与读者的约定，即他们也会隐喻性地将其扩展到其他情况。”(3)作为一个视觉艺术家，这种思维过程令我着迷。

“……深坑，小孔，扭曲和奇怪的凹槽。”计成，1635年（4）

在对岩石的思考中也要正确地理解其美学吸引力，特别是考虑到岩石的本质是奇形怪状的。但是，当石块堆成假山、单独摆放或靠墙堆放的过程中，他们也在某种程度上有助于展示游历的概念，以及在被动画面（图）之上展现出一种主动姿态（观）。造山是为了使岩石真实，明代证实了其兼具人造和天然的特性。(5) 进一步作为园林中的岩层，可视为宏大而复杂的三维雕塑作品。（6）然而，这些作品与雕塑的构思一样，需要一个移动的、具有感知力的观察者。他们扮演表演者的角色，鼓励互动而不是被动的观看行为。

即使对于文人石而言，借用其天然的缝隙与平衡，邀请观赏者游览这个空间作为一种“真实的”体验。这与宗炳（375年——443年）的观点一致，他写道，山水画提供相当于徒步的精神之旅，画上三英寸的垂直行程相当于数千英尺旅程。（7）在文人石中，我们也看到了奇幻空间的吸引力，这些孔洞经常被视为通往香格里拉或陶渊明笔下桃花源的入口。这些小孔构成了思维的另一个空间，就像一个视图的框架一样。对某些人来说，这种思想可能包含超越时代的社会政治现实。俗话说：

“儒学为入世之学，而道学为出世之学。” （8）

此外，与园林文化相关的早期学者、隐士的行为，既表明了创造性的孤独，诸如冥想、哲学思考、写作和阅读诗歌、绘画和弹奏古筝等；也展示了与社交活动的结合，诸如喝酒、垂钓和制作长生不老丸。（9）园林也是深夜幽会、节日庆祝、阖家游览甚至是经济作物生长的地方。除了美学方面，其显然也能够实现多种经济的，包括对已建立的等级制度的抵制。到了明朝，最受欢迎的审美标准也是超乎寻常的观赏标准，文人转向了“浊“这种谦逊的艺术方式，与华丽的宫廷艺术家迥然不同（且认为生活亦是如此）。体现了逃离原有道教实践，对于真实性的渴望。

“这位画家以前是邱方考的伯乐，因此他也了解绘画。”吴辰，14世纪（10）

虽然园林与绘画有着内在的联系，但即使是最具视觉效果的媒介，仍然依赖于大量的规则。一方面，许多中国画拒绝单一视角，倾向于时间和空间，要求观众从一个主题转移到另一主题上，而不是从单一的固定层面进行观赏。（11）中国古典概念中没有线条，平面和实体，而是将时间作为画作的一部分，体现了无限变换的观念或者是无华（12）。对于时空的理解，在游览者观赏园林时不断变化的尺度，多个视角，这些景点之间的间隔，以及在欣赏传统场景和蜿蜒曲折诗意性暗示，是至关重要的。（13）由于道教和禅宗中的虚空概念，空隙，房间，庭院或物体本身的空洞感可以被理解为具有无限潜力。（14）

“松树、小溪、山兽、夜间的昆虫、鹤、琵琶、棋子、台阶上的雨滴、窗户上的雪花、煮茶的声音，都是最纯净的声音。但是人阅读的声音是至高无上的。“（17世纪，15）

声音，颜色和香味可以从花园外的更大环境中借用（如景观）（16）。近旁植物的声学效果也会被利用，所以设计师可能会利用雨打芭蕉或莲花，或是风穿松林的效果。（17）这往往反映在园林内的景点名称上，如刘渊的“清风亭”，或拙政园的“听雨亭”。

特定种类的岩石在撞击时发出不同的声音，并由计成编目。比如，来自灵璧的岩石被击中时“发出响声，类似钟声”。来自大湖：“敲击时，岩石发出微弱的声音。”计成（18）

声音的感官输入甚至可能被认为是建筑中必不可少的条件：

道河楼南面是一个半亭形的音乐厅……砖被掏空，仿制成七弦琴的模样。如果有人进行敲击，砖就会发出悦耳的声音。袁和宫2004年（19）

在拙政园内，“远香堂“引入了旁侧莲花池的幽香（20）。步道上镶嵌着图案，并非只是纯粹的装饰，而是采用纹理和脚下的”触感“，将访客从纯粹的观赏者转变为参与者。这些图案在界定不同的空间、提供节奏和情绪的变化方面具有积极的作用（21）。

类似地，这些路径曲折或蜿蜒，像卷轴一样展开。在这两种情况下，效果都在于空间的扩展，并且在游览的同时增加了体验的持续时间。

“被薄雾和雨水冲刷，月光洒落在书墙。”计成（22）

如果园林在物理上和概念上与绘画有关，那么也经常被描述为“具象化的诗歌”。（23）最直接的体现，就是采用诗歌为园林命名。在另一个层面上，叶维廉认为中国诗词的开放性，鼓励人们从不同角度进行理解（24），这一思想也可能影响诗人大师设计园林的方式。这种流动性的布景与文章和寓言的结构性（曲折路径，分层视图等）相同。

命名是中国园林中的一个关键元素。(25) 它在社会，历史和文学典故之间发挥多重作用，也是一种头脑风暴，让所有者/艺术家有机会表达个人品味，同时通过共有认知对园林重新进行阐述（26）。同时，命名的模糊性使得游览者拥有发挥的空间。比如网师园可能表达了主人渴望享受渔民简单生活的愿望，也标志着其主人离开了危险的政治世界。在另一个层面上，标志着园林“在文学意义上无限延伸”。（27）其他人提出，命名甚至可以提供”……一种实现社会和政治变革的手段——而不仅仅是代表”。（28）毕竟，每一个人都可以大做文章。

最后，花园可能根本不需要存在。刘世龙的假想花园《并不存在的花园》（约17世纪早期）由于不受时间影响（29）——被一个忘恩负义的孩子或新主人拥有，而独树一帜。这是一个跃然于纸上，在脑海中建构的花园。

“如果我在现实中建造这样一个花园，其布局将会受到限制。然而，在想象中构建，其结构没有限制。这就是我的园林超然于世的原因。”刘世龙（30）

遵循这一粗略的速写，我无意贬低一种形式的交流或是背景。在强调非视觉因素的影响时，我往往忽略了视觉因素的影响。我相信读者将会同时考虑这些想法。尤其是在艺术方面，并不是非黑即白。具有讽刺意味的是，正是通过接受这些非视觉方面，美学框架才会呈指数级扩展，就像文徵明的画作一样，引起了我的兴趣。视觉是一种复杂的存在。

我想表达的是，园林从来就不是一件事物，一个存在的经济体。如果今天我们倾向于将园林美化成古迹，我认为我们需要重点关注其如何与其他的思维方式相协调，而非其“存在性”。（31）当然，我认为最重要的是游览者的参与。与北方传统或古典欧洲园林轴向花园更为静态的取向（或者实际上假定有外部观赏者，许多欧洲绘画的单一视角）相反，中国园林的构建往往使得游览者成为作品中的积极参与者。可以说，只有在这个参与的时刻，空间和运动创造了时间，花园才真正存在。

在文人的园林中，通过大量精心布置来唤起拜访者的整体感知。自我意识在空间和时间上的移动，对季节性和昼夜变化的关注，对于历史与诗意的致敬，以及随之而来的社会政治对话（当时和现在）交织在一起。让观察者深入思考并不只是位高权重者 的游戏，而是对于“社会群体”的展示，并且呼吁来访者参与这一民主的空间。在此，园林不是呈现一个封闭的审美和历史化的空间，而被视为当下精心构建的机器——在那里，游览者是最有权利的参与者。通过这种方式，我们都能成为艺术家。

目前，这些仍然是模糊的概念或遥远的想法。需要等待时间和空间以进一步诠释。

CraigEaston

于上海，2018年10月

Craig Easton博士是一位视觉艺术家、作家和教育家。他拥有墨尔本大学VCA博士学位（2014），《奇特布局：通过中国古代园林构建当代还原抽象绘画》。

石头的赏玩与收集

SKETCHING A PATH TOWARDS LOOKING / NON LOOKING IN CHINESE GARDENS

“Painting must be sought for beyond the shapes”, declared Chang Yen-yuan (1)

“There are, however, well-intentioned people who, afraid that visitors might not understand what is presented before them, place large man-made fish in ponds or clay pandas in front of a Panda Hall like large advertisements.” Chen Congzhou 1984 (2)

The briefest of essays this one but nevertheless a chance to sketch some recurrent thoughts around the curiousimportance of the non-visualin the private gardens of the southern literati. This idea of the ‘sketch’ as something hazy and indistinct is in itself celebrated and elevated by the classical literati. What I want to give you here then is a fragment of a larger vision. Whether or not this vision matches reality is, like Wen Zhengming’s inspirational Elevation for Remote Thoughts, where we see his patron on a precipice looking out over a vast lake and mountains that could not possibly exist within Zhouzheng Yuan, beside the point. Or possibly it is exactly the point.

The aesthetic qualities and devices of the gardens are well established, the careful integration of architecture, stone, water, and plantings with an endless succession of interlinking views operating as something like the unwinding of a landscape scroll, or ‘a painting to walk through’. Of these views, the act of ‘borrowing views’, often through a careful (re)framing of landscapes beyond the confinements of the garden walls is accorded a special place. Yet as Australian writer Stanislaus Fung has suggested of Ji Cheng’s classic garden text: “Yuan Ye asks designers to take on reinterpretation as the process of creation. It offers not a method of borrowing views, but a way of designing a process of thinking ….. The implied contract with the readers is that they too will metaphorically extend it to other situations.” (3) As a visual artist such processes of thinking fascinate me.

“…deep hollows, eyeholes, twists, and strange grooves.” Ji Cheng, 1635 (4)

In the particular contemplation of rocks much attention is rightly given to their aesthetic appeal, even when or especially when of a grotesque fantastical nature. But in their compiling into mountains, free standing or stacked against a wall, they also help demonstrate the notion of touring and a kind of active looking (guan) over the passive picture (tu). To make an imitation mountain was to make it real, with definitions of artificial and natural in the Ming proving fluid. (5) Further installed as formations in garden space, the stones can be thought of as large, complex, three-dimensional sculptural compositions. (6) These compositions however, as with the idea of sculpture in the round require a moving, perceiving viewer. They take on a performative role encouraging a particular physicality over passive acts of viewing.

Even in the case of an individual free-standing scholar stone the thinking is that in their natural crevices, their balance of tou, shouand lou the audience is being invited into a state of touring this space as a ‘real’ experience. This may be aligned with Zong Bing (375-443) who wrote that a landscape painting could offer a spirit journey equivalent to hiking, with a three-inch vertical stroke equaling thousands of feet. (7) In the scholar stone we also see appeals to a magic space with their holes frequently thought of as portals to the immortals or the Shangri-La of Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring.These eyeholes then are conceptually framing a way of thinking another space as much as framing of a view. For some this thinking might also embrace an existence beyond socio-political realities of the times. The saying goes:

“Confucianism is the doctrine of the scholar when in office and Daoism the attitude of the scholar when out of office.” (8)

Furthermore, listings of early scholar-hermit practices associated with the garden culture point to a mix of creative solitude and socializing with activities like meditation, philosophizing, composing and reading poetry, painting, and playing the zither, along with drinking wine, fishing, and making pills for immortality. (9) The gardens were also places of late night trysts, of festivals, public engagement and even growth of cash crops. If these are aesthetic sites they are clearly also ones capable of multiple economies including that of a resistance to established hierarchies. By the time of the Ming even the favoured aesthetic standard was one beyond usual viewing norms with a strong turn in the literati towards the idea of zhuo or a kind of humble even amateur approach to the arts set up as the antithesis of the professional court artist (and one supposes the life going with it). There is a signaling of a desire for authenticity escaping established viewing norms that fits best with Taoist practices.

“The painter was in a former life the judge of horses Chiu Fang-kao, thus he also understands painting.”

Wu Chen, 14thcentury (10)

Although the gardens are intrinsically linked to painting, even as the most visual of mediums painting still relies on a multitude of orders. For one, in rejecting singular optical perspective, much Chinese painting tends to time as well as space in asking the viewer to move from motif to motif, rather than reading from a single fixed viewpoint. (11) Instead of lines, planes and solids, plus time as straight lineal duration, comes the classical Chinese idea of boundless transformation or wu hua(12).This aspect of space and time in turn is paramount in the garden experience as the viewer meanders through continually changing scales, multiple viewpoints, intervals between these views, and constructive use of memory in appreciating traditional scenes and poetic allusions. (13) Thanks to notions of the Void in both Taoism and Ch’an, the perceived emptiness of the interval, of a room, a courtyard or an object in itself can be read as signifying infinite potential. (14)

“The sounds of pine trees, of brooks, of mountain beasts, of nocturnal insects, of cranes, of lutes, of chess pieces falling, of rain dripping on steps, of snow splashing on windows and tea boiling are all sounds of the utmost purity. But the sound of someone reading is supreme. “ (17thCentury, 15)

Sound, along with colours and fragrances could be borrowed (like the views) from a larger environment beyond the garden (16). Closer at hand, acoustic effects of plants were also used, so a designer might work with rain dripping on the leaves of banana trees or lotus flowers, or the wind through pines. (17) This is frequently reflected in the names of sites within gardens such as Liu Yuan’s Refreshing Breeze Pavilion’, or Zhuozheng Yuan’s ‘Listening to the Rain Pavilion’.

Specific varieties of rocks when struck make differing sounds and were catalogued by Ji Cheng. Rocks from Lingbi when struck “make a ringing, bell-like sound.” From the Great Lake: “When tapped the rocks give out a faint sound.” Ji Cheng (18)

The sensory input of sound might even be considered so essential as to be built into architecture:

To the south of the Daohe House is the Music Chamber in the shape of a half pavilion…the brick is hollowed out, imitating a seven-stringed zither laid on a brick. If one knocks it, the brick will give out pleasant sounds. Yuan & Gong 2004 (19)

Also within Zhuozheng Yuan,‘The Hall of Distant Fragrance’ actively incorporates the scent of blossoms from the Lotus pond it sits beside (20). Walkway mosaics, rather than being purely decorative, use texture and the accompanying ‘sense of touch’ underfoot as well as pattern to move the visitor beyond the purely visual into an animated participant. These mosaics as such have an active role in defining different spaces, providing changes in rhythm and mood (21).Similarly these paths zig-zag or meander and unwind like a scroll. In both cases the effect is in an expansion of space, and increase in the duration of experience alongside simple viewing.

“Washed clear of mist and rain, the moonlight falls on the book-lined study walls.”Ji Cheng (22)

If the gardens are physically and conceptually linked to painting they are regularly also described as “embodied poems”. (23) On a direct level this can appear through the use of poetic couplets or in the naming of a ting or a whole garden. On another level Wai-Lim Yip describes the open syntax of Chinese poetry as encouraging its reader to perceive it from a mobile point of view (24) and this thinking may also feed into the way the gardens have been designed by their painter poet masters. This mobile point of view is structural (zig-zag pathways, layered views etc) as well as literary and allegorical.

The use of naming is a key conceptual element in the Chinese garden. (25) It is given many roles moving between social, historical, and literary allusions, which as well as a kind of intellectual game playing, allows the owner/artist to express individual taste while reaffirming community through shared knowledge. (26). At the same time the ambiguities of naming allow for the audience to bring their own interpretative stance. A name such as Master of the Nets (Wangshi Yuan) might express the owner’s desire to enjoy the simple life of a fisherman, while publically signaling a retirement from the dangerous world of political office for that owner. On yet another level it illustrates what has been described as gardens “extending indefinitely in a literary sense”. (27) Others have proposed that naming might even provide “…a means of effecting – not merely representing – social and political change.” (28) This is, after all, a game that everyone can play.

Finally a garden might not need to exist at all. Liu Shilong’s imaginary garden The Garden That Isn’t Really Here (circa early 17th C.) was considered by its owner the superior garden as it would remain untouched by time (29) – And one supposes ungrateful children or new masters. This is a garden we literally read and construct in the mind.

“If I constructed such a garden in reality, its arrangement would be restricted. Constructed in the imagination, however, there are no limitations on its structure. This is what makes my garden superior.”

Liu Shilong (30)

Following this most cursory sketch it is not my intent to relegate one form of communication or one story over another. In highlighting the non-visual I leave behind for a moment visual qualities we all know exist. I am sure the reader is adept at considering such thoughts concurrently rather than in opposition. There is usually more than one narrative journey. With art especially so.Ironically it is through embracing these non-scopic aspects that the aesthetic frame expands exponentially just like the Wen Zhengming painting that so intrigues me. Vision is a complex beast.

The point here is that the garden was never just one thing, one economy of being. If today we have a tendency to aestheticizing the garden experience into a site of antiquities I think it is important to remember how its aesthetics were always in tandem with many other ways of thinking and therefore ‘being’ in the world. [(31) Of these I consider the most essential one is of that of a participatory viewer. As opposed to the more static orientation of the axial gardens of Northern tradition or classical European gardens (or indeed the single perspective of much European painting that posits an external viewer) Chinese gardens are configured to garner the viewer as active participant inside the work. Arguably it is only in this moment of participation, where space and movement create time, that the garden truly exists.

In the literati garden there is a call upon the visitor’s totality of perception via a multitude of devices. This includes a self-awareness moving in space and time, attention to seasonal and diurnal change entwined with an intellectual game play of historical and poetic references with all their attendant socio-political conversations (then and now). The call upon a thinking viewer is not just some elite game play but a thoughtful demonstration of ‘community’ and active call for participation by the visitor in the full democratic experience of these alternative world spaces. In this the gardens, rather than presenting a closed aesthetic and historicized space, might be read as a well-tuned conceptual machine for our contemporary present – where mere spectators are replaced by empowered, constructive participants. In such ways we all become artists.

For now these remain foggy notions or remote thoughts. Further explication will have to wait for another time. And space..

Craig Easton

Shanghai, October 2018

Dr Craig Easton is a visual artist, writer and educator. He holds a PhD from the VCA, University of Melbourne (2014), A Strange Arrangement: Constructing Contemporary Reductive Abstract Painting Through The Ancient Chinese Garden.

Endnotes:

Note:sections of the present paper directly source: Craig Easton, “A Strange Arrangement: Constructing Contemporary Reductive Abstract Painting Through The Ancient Chinese Garden” (PhD diss., VCA University of Melbourne, 2014). See the University of Melbourne digital repository at http://hdl.handle.net/11343/42162.See also Craig Easton, “Art & Chinese Gardens & Design & Abstract Painting &” in Peter Stupples and Jane Venis, Art and Design: History, Theory, Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2017)

Illustration: Wen Zhengming, Elevation for Remote Thoughts1533.

In Kerby, Kate, 1922. An Old Chinese Garden: A Three-fold Masterpiece of Poetry, Calligraphy and Painting by Wen Chen Ming.Chung Hwa Book Company, Shanghai

1. Chang Yen Yuan cited in Siren, Oswald. The Chinese on the Art of Painting; Texts by the Painter-Critics, from the Han through the Ch’ing Dynasties.(New York: Dover 2005, orig.1936) 29.

2. Chen Congzhou. On Chinese Gardens(Shanghai: Shanghai Press and Publishing Development Company, 2008, orig. Tongji University Press 1984), 26.

3. Fung, Stanislaus. “Self, scene and action: the final chapter of Yuan ye.” 133-34. In Landscapes of Memory and Experience, edited by Jan Birksted, (London: Spon Press, 2000) 129-136.

4. Ji Cheng cited in The Craft of Gardens, (Trans. Alison Hardie. New York: Better Link Press, 2012 (orig. 1635) 112-113.

5. Stuart Jan, “A Scholar’s Garden in Ming China: Dream and Reality,” Asian Art 3: 4, (1990) 39.

6. Johnston Stewart R. Scholar Gardens of China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991) 79.

7. Stuart 1990, 38-39.

8. Cited in Johnston 1991, 45.

9. Wang, Joseph, Cho. The Chinese Garden.(Oxford and New York: Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1998) 19.

10. Wu Chen cited in Siren 2005, 111.

11. Johnston 1991, 51.

12. Hall, David L. and Roger T. Ames. 1998. “The cosmological setting of Chinese gardens.”

180-181 In Fung, Stanislaus & John Makeham, guest eds. 1998. Chinese Gardens, special issue of Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, 18 (3) July-September. (Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks) 175-186.

13. Ibid 182.

14. Hu Dongchu, The Way of the Virtuous: the Influence of Art and Philosophy on Chinese Garden Design (Beijing: New World Press 1991) 15.

15. 17thcentury. Cited in Fung, Stanislaus. 1996. “Gardens of South East Asia.” CHINA. In Turner, Jane, ed. The Dictionary of Art. (London: Macmillan Publishers, vol 12) 85 – 93.

16. Wang 1998, 32.

17. Fang, Xiaofeng. The Great Gardens of China: history, concepts, techniques (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2010) 116

18. Ji, 113-115

19. Yuan, Xuehan & Gong Jiianyi. The Classical Gardens of Suzhou (Shanghai: Book Wind, 2004) 89.

20. Fung 1996, 92.

21. Keswick 2003, 160

22. Ji Cheng 1635, 47

23. Yang, Hongxun. The Classical Gardens of China: History & Design Techniques,trans. Hui Min. (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1982). 9.

24. Yip, Way-Lim, ed. & trans., Chinese Poetry: An Anthology of Major Modes and Genres(Durham: Duke University Press, 1997). 13.

25. Makeham, John. “The Confucian role of names in traditional Chinese gardens.” 192. In Fung, Stanislaus & John Makeham, guest eds. 1998. Chinese Gardens, special issue of Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, 18 (3) July-September. (Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks 1998) 187-210.

26. Ibid 204.

27. Keswick, Maggie.The Chinese Garden: History, Art & Architecture.ed. Alison Hardie. (London: Frances Lincoln,3rdrevised edn. 2003) 24.

28. Beattie, James, ed. Lan Yuan: The Garden of Enlightenment. (Dunedin: Dunedin Chinese Gardens Trust, 2008) 39.

29. Stuart, Jan, 1990(a). “Ming dynasty gardens reconstructed in words and images.” 164. Journal of Garden History 10 (3): 162-172.

30. Cited in Makeham 1998, 203.

31. Here I would direct the reader to two essential readings by Craig Clunas: Fruitful Sites, Garden Culture in Ming DynastyChina (Durham: Duke University Press 1996) and Pictures and Visuality in early Modern China, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1997).

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