The Chinese garden is certainly one of the most accomplished forms of artistic expression that traditional China has bequeathed. His concept, intimately linked to other forms of art such as painting, poetry, calligraphy, music and, of course, architecture, reflects, through the images he stages, a whole utopian and microcosm underlying philosophical and cultural currents.
« Shanshui » painting is the most closely mode of expression related to the art of the garden. Shanshui literally means mountains and waters, an expression that designates landscape painting in China. The aesthetics of the landscape knows its first age in China in the fourth century and its golden age in the sixth century.
The other mode of expression related to the art of garden is « Tianyuan » that is the pastoral landscape poetry.
But if we have treatises on the art of « Shanshui « from the 5th century, in two brief texts collected by Zhang Yanyuan in the « Memoir on painting in successive dynasties », and if the Tianyuan poetry has a representative illustrates by Tao Yuanming, there is no text, at least until the first half of the sixteenth century, dealing garden art, which is very astonishing for a civilization based on writing !
The reason may simply be that, following Zheng Yuan Xun « the garden differ depending on conditions, but there are no fixed rules on whether they can be recorded to be transmitted «
The « Yuanye » 园冶
Completed in 1631 (date of the author’s preface), published in 1634, the « Yuanye »or « The Craft of the Garden » is the only book devoted exclusively to the art of gardening.
It is the work of a master gardener, Ji Cheng, famous in his time.
This text, underrated, is the only Chinese reference book on the design and realization of traditional gardens. But « Yuanye » is not a simple manual for garden masters.
Besides the technical aspects, it also presents an ideal vision of the Chinese garden. Indeed, Ji Cheng the scholar gives us his pictorial and poetic vision of the garden, fruit of the long tradition of which he is the heir. Hence the consistency and depth, but also the aesthetic character.
« Me, the untalented…”. We know very little about Ji Cheng’s life. The only biographical elements we are sure come mainly from his preface to « Yuanye », with introductions from Dacheng Ruan and Zheng Yuanxun.
From the Preface, we can deduce that Ji Cheng was born in 1582 in Song Ling. Accomplished scholar, he loved the works of Guan Tong and Jing Hao, great masters of Shanshui at the time of the Five Dynasties (907-960). His own work was already appreciated from a young age and his poetic art, flourishing. Having traveled extensively around the age of forty, he returned to his native country and settled in Runzhou. It was around 1623, at the age of 42 that Ji Cheng made his first garden. A few years later, during another creation, it took time in between writing « Yuanye ».
“The garden is created by the human hand, but should appear as if created by heaven «
The ecological philosophy of « The Craft of the Garden »
The work is broken into three volumes. Volume one focuses on overall principles, in particular: situation, layout, buildings and their fittings. Volume two contains descriptions and illustrations of decorative balustrades. Volume three covers doorways, windows, walls, decorative pavements, artificial mounds, rock selection, and a final chapter, chapter ten on borrowed scenery (« jie jing »).
The work is primarily focused on architectural features, rather than natural features. Contrasts have been drawn between this and other classic works of East Asian garden design, such as Sakuteiki which concentrates on water and rocks, and numerous Japanese works of the Edo period, to suggest a fundamental difference in approach between Chinese and Japanese garden design – namely, emphasis on architectural and natural features, respectively. However in face of a more advanced understanding of the last, conclusive chapter ten of the book it is clear that natural features are in fact the prime theme of Yuanye.
The title of the last chapter of Yuanye is Jie jing 借景, « borrowing scenery ». This is not as a single design idea of borrowing scenery as is usually believed. Rather it deals with the essence of landscape design philosophy in its entirety.
The ever-changing moods and appearances of landscape in full action are understood by the author as an independent function that becomes an agent for garden making. The object and subject, as either the landscape or the garden maker, shift continuously moving towards the conclusion: landscape and garden maker are both object and subject and are interchangeable. To be able to make a garden, the garden maker needs to meld with the landscape on the site, while natural phenomena become mnemonics for common knowledge as expressed in well-known passages in classic literature or poetry.
So, it is the ecology of nature, including man, which motivates and moves design.
His lost masterpieces
“My fame thus spread far and near ». In this career of master gardener stone dresser, three achievements are certain since confirmed.
These are Wu Xuan Garden in Jinling ( today, Nanjing) ; Wang Shiheng Garden in Luanjiang ( Jiangsu ) and Zheng Yuanxun Garden in Yangzhou ( also in Jiangsu province)
You have only the Ji Cheng’s thirty-five room former residence at Huichuan Bridge, Tongli, that still exists now and it is becoming a very famous tourist attraction.
