The silent philosophy

Hsia Kuei: Pure and Remote Views of Mountains and Streams

Hsia Kuei (second half of the twelfth century to the first half of the thirteenth century) was a native of Ch'ien-t'ang (Hangchow). He was a representative court painter of the Southern Sung dynasty together with Ma Yuan and Liang K'ai. This long landscape scroll is an outstanding masterpiece traditionally attributed to Hsia Kuei. Scenes of pure and remote views of mountains and streams undergo diverse changes within the scroll with its transcendent composition and astounding brushwork.

"Poem is a verbal picture, and picture is a silent poem" (Su Tung-p'o)

Traditional western painting tells stories, the old chinese paintings only express silence. In this silence doens't speak the tortured ego of the painter, nor the biblical story ... The chinese landscape hardly represents something and doens't need any explanation. It only generates a mood (Stimmung). And this mood only demands a surrendering, not to the image, but to the mood. I can't describe the mood, I can only be tuned, and maybe I'd be able to say something about this 'gestimmt-sein' ('being tuned'), though I feel constantly I'd better keep silence. Significant is the strong reductive, almost unpictural character. It expresses wordless the philosophy of Zen. Therefore one shouldn't watch the factual that is, but open oneself complementary for what is absent.