Uncanny 'Yijing'
Yang Yongliang's 2014 work Traveler's Among Mountains and Streams references the extremely famous landscape painting of the same title by Fan Kuan, a Northern Song painter. By recreating what is arguably the most famous traditional Chinese art work, Yang's statments become more pronounced. Unlike the smog that hovers over Shanghai, one thing that is clear is that Yang’s works represent “an ominous reminder that nature often overpowers the human order, especially when mankind does not adequately respect it." [1] This ominous or unsettling feeling was described by Chu Kiu-Wai in his treatise of urban aesthetics in Chinese art and cinema as an “uncanny yijing,” bringing together Freud’s concept of “the uncanny” and the Chinese concept of yijing 意境, or the artistic mood or conception embodied in traditional landscape painting. [2] The yijing, or the Confucian ideal of harmony and unity between nature and humans seen in landscape paintings, is combined with the “uncanny,” “everything that has to do with notions of alienation, revolution, and repetition.” [3] As stated by Chu, the depictions by modern Chinese artists of urban landscapes “offer critiques towards the negative impacts of global capitalism in China, and mourn the disintegration and loss of harmony between man and his environment.” [4] In placing an uncanny aesthetic on traditional landscape imagery, Yang is emphasizing man’s dislocation from the natural world. He has expressed his interest in working with these binary elements, stating, “There is always a contradiction within my works…the contrast can be that of peace and conflict, can be that of past and present, and can be that of a natural environment and the city.” [5] Yet in not letting go of traditional landscape aesthetics, and desiring to follow the yijing found in his predecessor’s works, he is attempting to present an opposition against the alienating modern landscape.
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[1] Maxwell K. Hearn, Ink Art: Past as Present in Contemporary China,(New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013): 106.
[2] Chu Kiu-wai, “Constructing Ruins: New Urban Aesthetics of Chinese Art and Cinema, “ Master’s thesis, The University of Hong Kong, 2009: 30.
[3] Ibid., 43.
[4] Ibid., 39.
[5] “Schoeni Art Gallery, In Conversation Series Part 9, Yang Yongliang,” Youtube video, 7:22, posted by “Schoeni Art Gallery,” April 11, 2013