Kun Can’s Artist Riverbend

Asian art hand and wall scrolls have been admired for centuries with their beautifully intricate designs and seances, some of the artist who did these paintings became masters of their craft and we still learn about them today as they continue to inspire. During my most recent trip to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco on September twenty-third, two-thousand-and- eighteen, I had the privilege to see a collection of ink on paper scrolls known as the Brundage Collection. Here I saw a beautiful wall scroll by the artist Kun Can, it was called “The Riverbend”.

The painting “The Riverbend” by one of the Four-Monk painting masters, Kun Can, was one of the most influential paintings in the Qing Dynasty and was culturally significant to Asia. His painting clearly depicts one of the styles of the Ming to Qing Dynasty and shows many things that China valued in paintings and in life. His paintings are landscapes that are very important and traditional in Chinese art and other Asian art.

Another very specific, prominent feature during this time period that he clearly represents are the poems that happen to be taking up a large majority of the area in all of his paintings.

His paintings strongly represent the culture in that time in China, there was a cultural rift between those who supported the Qing Dynasty and “those who considered themselves loyal ‘leftover subjects’ of the vanquished Ming dynasty”. The title of the art piece is “The Riverbend”, the river bends the painter, Kun Can is referencing is the Xiang River in Hunan province.

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You learn this by his poem which reads in the top right corner in the page, ‘“I grew weary of the city and retired to the riverside. Early in the morning, after bathing, I came to the famous Xiang River and sang sad songs to the cloudy mountaintops. This is the place where the Duke of Fan used to visit and hold gatherings. As I watched the dusty world, my mind reverted to a state of dejection and to the desolation of an unkempt garden. I became entangled in melancholy. When the immortal Wang[Image from Asian Art Museum Online web collection]

Zijin attained the Way, he disappeared in scrolls of clouds. Phoenixes sang over the Yellow and Ren rivers, and cranes nested and stayed for an entire year. A cool wind rises, falters, and dies. The water in the creek is limpid. The swirling river then invades the creek’s boundaries. I forget my own existence to follow Ji and Yuan. They lived with ink slabs as neighbors and cared only for literary gems. The starving kite can only wail, but what is the use of just lamenting? Even if Heaven had kept secret the works of Zhong and Wang, the bones and flesh of their beings would have remained the same. When the hearts are free from all impurities, genius is always clearly manifested.’” This is what the poem reads, clearly stating his expressions and feeling. The medium he use for this painting was traditional ink on the material of a paper wall scroll. The dimensions of the painting are “39.5 inches high and 47.25 inches wide, but the overall paper size that the image is on is 93.875 inches high and 50 inches wide.” The painting was made in the Qing Dynasty in the year 1661.

The painting is very intricate and has many important details. The lines made by dry bushing are rough but also blended and warped enough to give the viewer a sense that there is fog distorting the mountains in the painting. Not only are there broad strokes for mountains and fog but there is very small detailed work put into the trees that if you look to close my not seem like a tree but from afar it becomes clearly apparent that there is a forest and the brush strokes are branches and leaves. The colors are very traditional with black ink and a red seal. The seal is the artist’s name or whichever name the artist chooses to put on that painting, Kun Can personally have many names for himself. The tools used to create this painting are also very traditional; black ink, dry brush, and a paper wall scroll. The technique is what Kun Can is famous for, the “Four-Monk painting” masters, Kun Can being one of the masters. The composition has smaller temples that blend into the landscape of the art. Giant rigid mountains are shown shrouded in a smoky mist. There also seems to be a mountain trail that leads the viewer’s eye up the mountain along the path towards to poem placed as if one was looking at the poem from the mountain’s cliffs. The scale shows the aspect of nature above all other elements of the painting making the man-made temples very small in comparison.

The rough line style is representative of the turmoil of his own mind and it is very personal, like the poem that shows, “In personality, he was noted for being frank and straightforward.” (Wikipedia Kun Can Article) how his lines are poetic but also to the point like the line “I grew weary of the city and retired to the riverside. Early in the morning, after bathing, I came to the famous Xiang River and sang sad songs to the cloudy mountaintops. This is the place where Duke of Fan used to visit and hold gatherings…” he simply states what he did and think. His art is very traditional combating the changing society from the Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty. The technique itself is supposed to show how the remaining followers of the now gone Ming Dynasty “opposed the political ideas of the Qing Dynasty” and the [Image from Asian Art Museum Online web collection.

“The school of four Wangs.” (China Culture.org). The Four Monk painting technique uses the landscape as a way to escape the turmoil of the Manchu conquest.(Asian Art Museum). The composition of the piece also shows how Kun Can, a monk turned abbot, of the Niushou Shan Monastery, views the world. The representation of nature is far bigger than anything made from man showing that nature is far more important and although there are man-made structures they blend into the mountainside becoming one with it as to not distract from the beauty of the mountain, river, trees and clouds. Even the monk figure painted in the most forefront temple is very small in comparison possibly showing that humans are insignificant to the ongoing current of time of nature.

When I was exploring the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco the artwork immediately captivated me with the amount of detailed work in the paintings. Ink on paper scrolls also intrigues me because there can be so many different techniques but they all have the unity of nature and intricate designs. When I did more research on Kun Can I learned that even though the paintings were unified as a style as a whole of ink on paper scrolls that the four monks paintings was actually a silent way to protest the changing environment of China. The technique varies from the other techniques that conform more to the changing environments to please the new Qing Dynasty instead of representing the vanishing of the Ming Dynasty. The silent rebellion based in this artwork is very fascinating to learn about especially since the painting is very calm showing mountains and a melancholy poem that shows the sadness of the Manchu conquest and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty. This painting “The Riverbend” by Kun Can is beautifully made, but when looked into it shows the struggle of China and also puts on display the skill of one of the Four Monk painters that were very influential and culturally significant to Asia.

Works Cited

1. “Four Wangs and Four Monks Paintings.” Social Organizations in China, China Culture, en.chinaculture.org/gb/en_artqa/2003-09/24/content_39614.htm.
2. “Kun Can.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 29 Apr. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kun_Can.
3. “Online Collection.” Asian Art Museum Online Collection, Asian Art Museum, onlinecollection.asianart.org/view/objects/asitem/materials@ink/81?t%3Astate%3Aflow=4af4bbfd-a7bd-4f3f-9bfd-c69726bb8f74.
4. “Wooded Mountains at Dusk.” The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Metropolitan Museum of Art, www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1989.363.129/.