Garden art in China
Garden design is an important component of traditional Chinese art and can be traced back to the 1st millennium BC. Trace back to BC. Unlike the gardens that arose in ancient Egypt and the Middle East , the focus here was not on the plant. Rather, Chinese gardens are conceived as the image of an ideal universe, the essential components of which were man-made lakes and hills, unusually shaped vegetation and stones.
Features of the Chinese garden
Goal setting
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Traditional Chinese landscape painting and the art of garden design are extremely closely related. In contrast to the European garden, which only came into contact with painting in the 18th century, painting and garden art developed in parallel in China. The world of poetry as well as the development of architecture , drama , calligraphy and sculpture also influenced the Chinese garden.
The aim of Chinese garden design is to achieve harmony between earth, sky, stones, water, buildings, paths and plants (the so-called seven things). Man, as an eighth, could then find perfect harmony with them and in them. The essential design elements in the Chinese garden are stones and water, with the water often being crossed by zigzag bridges lying flat on the water or by bridges rising in a semicircle over the water. The popular explanation for the unusual design of the zigzag-shaped, handrailless bridges is that “the evil spirits cannot come over” because they can only move in a straight line. Marianne Beuchert points out, however, that according to Daoist philosophy , these bridges also contain the warning to carefully walk the path of life, which never leads straight ahead. The semicircular bridges are reflected in the water to form a full circle, the Chinese sky symbol .
Imperial parks are usually divided into different zones because they served different purposes. Part was used for government affairs, part was used for living and everyday life and part was only used for the pleasure of viewing. The imperial parks of the Qing period still included temples. The park buildings were generally less subject to formal rules than the palace buildings of the main residence. The basic color composition of a park consists of the green of the trees, the red of the columns, the white of the walls and the gray of the clay tile roofs.
Feng Shui in the Chinese garden
Feng Shui is Chinese geomantics , the art of reading a landscape and aligning the surroundings and buildings in such a way that the flow of positive energy, known as Qi , is maximized and brings happiness. According to this concept, the ideal garden has high, protective mountains in the north, gentle hills in the east that drop further to the south, and a protective river runs in the west. Since Qi likes to flow in gentle curves, ponds and paths do not have straight lines. In order to create good Feng Shui, Yin and Yang had to be embodied in a balanced way in the garden . This was achieved through the contrasts of short and wide views, of rough and soft, of mountain and plain, vertical and horizontal or simple and artistic decoration of the buildings. For example, a simple veranda with clear, straight lines can have complex carving on the load-bearing beams under the roof or a whitewashed wall can be shaded by a tree.
Meaning and symbolism of plants
Around the time of the Song Dynasty (960–1279), a decision had been made as to which plants could adorn a garden. Everything that did not count as garden plants at that time was considered a “wild flower” or “weed” until the 19th century.
Plants valued in the ancient Chinese garden include:
- Weeping willow , which marks the beginning of spring and was also a sexual symbol
- Winter cherry (Prunus mume) , which is admired for its courage to open its flowers on the frost-free days in January
- Peonies , which symbolized both a woman's life full of love and wealth
- Chrysanthemums , which, because of their blooming in the inhospitable autumn, symbolized tenacity and bravery and thus belonged to the group of "plants of long life"
- Bamboo , the knot-like parts of the straight stems symbolizing the steps on the way to enlightenment
- Pine trees , symbol of masculinity
- Lotus , which symbolizes purity, perfection and unity, but is also a symbol for summer
Buildings, gates, bridges, plaques
Compared to foreign gardens, structures in China have a much greater weight and an extremely important place. In the gardens they are both an ornament and a place to enjoy the scenery, relax and have fun. This is also reflected, for example, in the picturesque names that these buildings bear. They are called for example:
- Hall where you can listen to the orioles ( New Summer Palace , Beijing)
- Pavilion to Hear the Waterfall ( Summer Palace , Chengde)
- Joyful Clouds Tower ( Beihai Park , Beijing)
- House of Seeing the Pine and Looking at the Blossoms ( The Garden of the Master of the Nets )
In a small or medium-sized garden, buildings often take up a third of the area. The functions of the buildings are combined with the peculiarities of the landscape - they form an organic whole with the garden. The buildings are traditionally made of dark wood, wooden lattice and bamboo, with whitewashed walls and roofs covered with clay tiles. The white walls served as a background for trees and plants and also reflected the light. Preferred building types were:
- Veranda : Open to the front, often attached to the side of a house
- Drying boats: Open-fronted, often veranda-like buildings that are built over a surface of water so that one can look down into the water and meditate on the reflection
- Walkways. Famous walkways are for example:
- The Corridor of the Percolating Spring (Qinquanlang) in Beihai Park , Beijing
- The Long Corridor (Changlang) in the Summer Palace , Beijing. At 728 meters, this corridor is the longest covered path in the ancient Chinese gardens.
- Pavilions such as the bronze pavilion in the New Summer Palace , Beijing
- Lookout houses, which are often octagonal
- Bridges , such as the Bridge of the Pine Wind in the Summer Palace in Chengde.
Another special feature of the Chinese garden are the pair of vertical writing tablets and the horizontal nameplates. They are almost inseparable from the garden structures and form important decorative elements. The content of the boards and signs is generally related to the surroundings of the buildings. Often these are lines from famous poems, in which special features of the scenery are indicated.
History of Chinese garden art
Beginnings
Similar to the development of garden art in Egypt and the Middle East , hunting parks are at the beginning of Chinese garden art. They were created as early as the time of the Zhou dynasty (11th century to 256 BC). During the Han Dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD), palaces , terraces, and pavilions were built in these parks . In the Shanglin Park of the Han emperor Wudi (140–87 BC) there were gardens, palaces and pavilions, all of which served their own purposes: making music, singing, looking at rare birds and strange fish, and enjoying dogs , Horses, elephants and deer as well as the rearing of unusual flowers and trees. The Shanglin Park thus formed a complex that encompassed the most varied of livelihoods, with the buildings being of particular importance. That is why the term “Architecture-Palace-Park” is used for the time of the Han and Qin dynasties. At the same time, the first gardens were created, in which the landscape was strongly shaped, as well as the first large private gardens. During this time, the art of "penjing" or bonsai evidently emerged - even if some of the trees were two or more meters high and were tended in large bowls in the garden.
The development of the "natural landscape garden"
At the time of the Wei (220–265 AD) and Jin (265–420) and the North and South Dynasties (420–589 AD) practiced the worship of nature, the glorification of rural life in literature and Art as well as the development of the theory and representation technique of landscape painting have a decisive influence on the layout and method of garden creation. Canals were dug and water was brought in, ponds were dug, mountains were piled up with towering rocks and multiple ridges, with deep streams, caves and ravines, and the artistic landscaping was carried out to the extreme. Either houses and halls protruded from the parks, or groups of buildings were set at the foot of hills. This development of the so-called "natural landscape garden" in turn brought about changes in the shape of the imperial palaces with their parks. The Sui Emperor Yangdi , for example, had the West Park in Luoyang laid out with a lake as a “sea” replica of around five kilometers in circumference, from which islands rose up. On these island mountains there were terraces, observation pavilions, halls and similar buildings. A canal ran in strong turns through the adjacent area, the so-called “16 courtyards”, and ended in the artificially created “sea”. Each of these “courtyards” corresponded to a separate park-like facility within this park. This form of garden design is also known as the "landscape architecture park of the Sui period".
The Tang and Song Dynasty Gardens
Under the Tang (AD 618–907) and Song dynasties , China became prosperous thanks to exports of silk and ceramics. With the economic prosperity, Chinese art and culture also experienced a unique bloom. The development of landscape painting during this time also influenced garden design. The ideal landscape of painting was recreated as a “scenery with meaning” (yijing) in the gardens (the so-called landscape garden of the free painting style of the Tang and Song times). Thanks to the growth of private financial strength, the size of private gardens also increased during this period. Poets in particular loved the landscape so much that they built simple country houses with gardens. The most famous poet garden was that of the famous poet Wang Wei (699–759). It was located at the foot of the Zhongnan-shan Mountains and was one of the first "literature gardens". Wang Wei created scenarios in his garden that had such poetic names as "willow waves", "'Ah!' - lake" or "house of the patterned apricots".
In the private gardens of the Song Dynasty , particular emphasis was placed on “juxtaposing scenarios (duijing)” and “borrowing scenarios (jiejing)” in order to widen the field of vision. Similar to how statues were set up in European gardens, it was customary to set individual boulders in the garden.
The Ming and Qing Dynasty Gardens
Under the Ming and Qing dynasties , garden art was further developed on this basis and its technique was perfected. During this time, private gardens were widespread, whereby the connection between garden art, literature and painting became ever closer and reached a very high level. At the time of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911), large private gardens were created, especially in the region around Yangzhou . In general, they were not used for living, but were places where the owner - a wealthy merchant or civil servant, for example - held parties, enjoyed poetry or rested. The main buildings of a garden, which are usually used to receive guests or organize parties, are often designed as halls that are on the water or open on all four sides so that the scenery can be enjoyed on all sides. The main objects of observation are rocks and water. At the time the Yangzhou Gardens were in bloom, watercourses and rock scenes were found in every garden. The private gardens of Suzhou are also famous , a region that was particularly favored for the development of garden art, as there were numerous water sources, the local flora was diverse and stones were broken nearby.
Famous Chinese gardens
- Imperial Gardens
- Beihai Park , Beijing
- Old Summer Palace , Beijing
- New Summer Palace , Beijing
- Summer Palace in Chengde
- Private gardens
Influence on foreign countries
Japan
Chinese gardening was introduced to Japan in the 6th century AD and is one of the sources of the Japanese art of gardening .
Europe
Even Marco Polo had described the Chinese gardens that so completely deviated from the European, but his descriptions were too vague, as they could have great influence on garden design in Europe.
This changed when the Franciscan Matteo Ripa brought back numerous copperplate engravings from his trip to China , which were able to convey a picture of Chinese garden design. During his visit to England he met numerous representatives of the English aristocracy who willingly adopted these ideas in the design of their landscaped gardens. This led to the so-called “ Jardin anglo-chinois ”, a hybrid of geometric and landscaped garden design.
Chinese gardens have increasingly emerged in Europe since the 1970s. Often they were realized as part of town partnerships by Chinese horticultural experts who used plants, rocks and architectural parts imported from China. Well-known examples are:
- the garden of fragrance and splendor in Munich (opened 1983)
- the Chinese Garden in Bochum (1986)
- the Garden of Heavenly Peace in Frankfurt am Main (1989)
- the China Garden Zurich (1994)
- the garden of the regained moon in Berlin-Marzahn (2000)
- the garden of many views in Mannheim (2001)
See also
literature
sorted alphabetically by authors / editors
- Marianne Beuchert ; The gardens of China . In Hans Sarkowicz (ed.): The history of gardens and parks . Frankfurt am Main 2001.
- Oliver Fülling: Gardens in China - The 50 most beautiful travel destinations . Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-89479-766-9 .
- Marie Luise Gothein ; History of garden art , reprint of the Jena 1926, Hildesheim 1977 editions.
- Roni Jay; Holy Gardens - Oases for reflection and meditation , Neuhausen am Rheinfall 1999.
- Michaela Kalusok ; Crash course garden art , Cologne 2003.
- Bianca Maria Rinaldi: "The Chinese Garden in Good Taste". Jesuits and Europe's Knowledge of Chinese Flora and Art of the Garden in the 17th and 18th Centuries . Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-89975-041-6 .
- Bianca Maria Rinaldi: The Invention of the Chinese Garden: From Western Perception to the Construction of a Global Identity . In: Die Gartenkunst 28 (2/2016), pp. 257–277.
- Qiao Yun (Ed.); Old Chinese garden art , Leipzig 1986.
Web links
- Traditional Chinese Gardens (English)
- The Classical Chineses Garden - "The Classical Chinese Gardens" - Image gallery on ShanghaiHongkong.com (English)
