Neither Chinese landscape painting nor garden design, two of China’s most outstanding contributions to the art and architecture of the world, could exist without rocks. Chinese value rocks for their philosophic and aesthetic significance as they found expression in traditional Chinese connoisseurship. Rocks are both the frame of a garden and the focus of visual attention. Earth and flowers are fitted into and around this fundamental structure. Paintings of mountains and gardens also feature anthropomorphized rocks. This ground-breaking exhibition presented more than fifty representations of rocks and mountains in all media, with a large number of paintings in all sizes, as well as actual rocks for scholars’ desks and “found” sculptures.
Kernels of Energy, Bones of Earth: The Rock in Chinese Art
力源地骨：中国艺术中的赏石
October 26, 1985 – January 26, 1986
Media Coverage
- Michael Brenson, “Art: ‘Kernels Of Energy,’ How Chinese See Rocks,” The New York Times, January 3, 1986.
“Despite the show’s modest size – it contains 50 works, many of them small – it seems big. Through his selection of sculptures and paintings and his invaluable catalogue, John Hay of New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts sets out to survey the rock in Chinese culture. Since for the Chinese everything in the natural world was interrelated and filled with religious and philosophical meaning, a serious handling of the rock throws open the doors to just about everything.”
- John Hay, “The Rock and Chinese Art,” Orientations, December 1985. 107
Related Events
Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival, is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. Often called the Lunar New Year, it begins on the...
Nearly 70 years of archeological excavations in the capital of Three Yan states — Dragon City (longcheng), today’s Chaoyang in Liaoning province — have...
“Shan Shui Reboot” presents visually spectacular and thought-provoking creations by seven young artists born between 1974 and 1992.
China Institute Gallery...