I received the following from Diane Calder as a follow-up to yesterday's post on Pompeii at LACMA and the Getty Villa, and since photos can't be posted in the comments section, I'm putting it up as a guest post.
Turn towards the east from LACMA and the Getty Villa for another view of the melding of two dimensional depictions of historical gardens with their three dimensional counterparts. The placement of paintings and drawings from the Weng Collection in the gallery at the Huntington immediately adjacent to their recently installed Ming garden, presents a unique opportunity for visitors to compare their stroll through that botanical haven with the experience of contemplating 12th to 17th century examples of painted depictions of Chinese landscapes.Huntington Gardens, photo by Diane Calder
Viewing platforms in classic Ming gardens were frequently designed and positioned to focus on man-made interpretations of natural sites, familiar to viewers in literature or paintings. Three renown Chinese hermits, metaphorically represented on a 15th century scroll by chrysanthemum, narcissus and plum branches, are subtly cool in comparison with the reclining heavenly bodies depicted in the Garden Scene, House of the Golden Bracelet, Pompeii. And the placid stream in the Huntington Chinese garden seems to reflect a fabricated dream of tranquility negated by the highlights of the Yangzi River coursing between its Tibetan plateau and the East China Sea portrayed on a 53 foot long Qing dynasty scroll featured in the exhibition.
Chinese Painting and Calligraphy from the Weng Collection at the Huntington Library through July 13.Xiang Yuanbian, Ming dynasty, “Landscape after a Poem by Ji Kang”
Hanging scroll
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete