Landscape and the Representation of Public Spaces: Chinese Visual Culture from Tenth to Fourteenth Century

This dissertation examines the genre of Chinese landscape during the Song-Yuan period across artistic media, ranging from paintings and maps to fans and ceramic pillows. The project approaches the rise and circulation of landscape imagery in relation to social-political change, namely, the increasing separation of public and private spheres of action in political theory and practice during the Song, Jin, and Yuan dynasties. The first two chapters address the fiscal separation of state tax revenue from the emperor's privy treasury, along with the emergence of new administrative concepts such as "public interest" and "public opinion." The following two chapters explore the public consumption and mobilization of landscape imagery in an increasingly commercialized society.
Building on previous studies of political content in Chinese painting, this study sets out to examine more specifically the role of landscape pictures in political discourse. It will investigate how landscape became a medium for channeling social and political claims from the above to below, from below to above, and among those in between. Public-minded statesmen recruited through the Civil Service Examination system saw the need to construct a public persona demonstrating their concern for the common good. Theoretically, this was a requirement for recruitment into the state administration. Many of the most prominent statesmen saw themselves as champions for the common taxpayer. Between the tenth and twelfth centuries, state commissioned landscape paintings began to include images of public infrastructure paid for with public funds, as well as shops or restaurants owned by private persons. Such paintings enabled viewers to visualize mutually responsible relationships between the state and the people, as well as between different social groups. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, landscape appeared on popular kinds of merchandise such as painted fans and pillows. Landscapes appearing on these media enabled their owners to project their own, personal views about public issues to friends and even to the public at large. This dissertation examines the dynamic interaction between landscape imagery on everyday objects, print culture, and popular literature, revealing the many ways in which landscape art could convey content relevant to public issues in both elite and vernacular culture.