Exploring Cosmic Consciousness in Fan Kuan’s ‘Travelling amid Mountains and Streams’

Northern Song Dynasty landscape painting, unlike Western landscape painting, was shaped by Chinese philosophical thought, particularly Zhuangzi's cosmic consciousness. This paper argues that the 'great landscape' phenomenon in Northern Song art reflects a worldview where humans are small within vast nature, aiming for 'the unity of heaven and man.' Analyzing Fan Kuan's work, the paper shows how his deliberate contrast between tiny human figures and enormous mountains embodies this cosmic perspective, influenced by the era's intellectual trends and Zhuangzi's ideas.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Although Chinese landscape painting shares the same English name as European landscape painting, Western landscape painting is influenced by the modeling principle and Western classical philosophy. And few Western landscape paintings exist that depict the great landscapes. In China, by contrast, in the Northern Song Dynasty, landscape painting reached an unprecedented height. Therefore, this paper posits a hypothesis: the great landscape consciousness in the Northern Song Dynasty landscape painting is also influenced by Chinese thought; more specifically, it was influenced by Zhuangzi’s cosmic consciousness. First and foremost, this paper determines the specific meaning of cosmic consciousness by exploring and sorting out previous literature. Secondly, this paper analyzes the specific historical background of the Northern Song Dynasty to explore the influence of the trend and fashion of The Times on the formation of the “great landscape” phenomenon. Then, this paper explores Fan Kuan’s image and his creation process to connect with the cosmic consciousness reflected in this process and makes an in-depth analysis of the painting. Fan Kuan’s choice of painting methods and the sharp contrast between the smallness of the person and the enormity of the mountains that he intentionally depicted produced the same effect: they highlight the grandeur of the natural scenery and embody the cosmic consciousness expressed by Fan Kuan—just like Zhuangzi’s cosmology, he can calm down and understand the thoughts of the mountains to achieve the ideological realm of “the unity of heaven and man” in China.