武陵桃源 Buryô tôgen (Wuling’s Peach Blossom Spring), Watanabe Gentai

Archive Label 2003:
The ‘Peach Blossom Spring,’ a story by poet Tao Yuanming (365-427), became the classic expression of longing for a timeless, peaceful utopia. Countless references to it appear in poetry and painting throughout East Asia. The fable concerns a lost fisherman who discovers a spring surrounded by fragrant peach blossoms that leads to a cave. The cave is a portal to an isolated valley within which is a small village, separated for generations from the outside world. People there live in harmony and simplicity. The fisherman remains for a few days, then leaves to get his family and return to this idyllic spot. Unfortunately, he is never again able to find the mysterious spring.

Watanabe Gentai presents the narrative elements of this famous story as subsidiary to the lush landscape. The fisherman is seen at the bottom, surrounded by blossoming peach trees and confronting the mountainous barrier that isolates the secret valley. He is about to discover the cave that leads to the village beyond.

Within the valley, the village is portrayed with rustic simplicity. The villagers are busily engaged in agriculture and fishing, or are seen visiting each other in their houses or resting in pavilions. In the distance is a mountain range with a large central peak, its prominent placement in the painting a standard form of landscape composition. The mountains and hills are painted in the ‘Blue and Green’ manner, a color scheme used to evoke otherworldly, idyllic places and bygone ages. The artist was a renowned landscape painter, known for his technical expertise, and creates here an elegant combination of landscape and narrative, naturalism and stylization.

Exhibition Label:
"The Art of Stories Told," Jun-2004, Veronica de Jong
The celebrated poet Tao Yuanming (365-427) who retired from public office so as to enjoy his final years writing and growing chrysanthemums wrote the “Peach Blossom Spring” prose-poem. Tao Yuanming’s desire to realize a simple and peaceful life is evident in this story of a fisherman that discovered within a grove of blossoming peach trees a cave leading to a secluded valley inhabited by people cut off from the rest of China. They lived prosperously and happily and the fisherman enjoyed their company for several days until he decided to return home. When he tried to revisit this idyllic place, though, he could no longer find it and was never able to return.
This story is depicted in vivid colors of blue and green, which in Chinese paintings were often associated with depictions of immortal paradises. The utopian realm and Chinese empire are strikingly divided in the lower section of the painting by a large rocky mountain and the idyllic village is sensitively depicted in great detail.

Exhibition Label:
"Time/Frame," Jun-2008, Robert Fucci, Shuyun Ho, Lauren Kernes, Lara Kuykendall, Ellen C. Raimond, and Stephanie Teasley
Peach Blossom Spring is a timeless utopia created by Tao Qian (365-427 CE) that has been one of the most important subjects in East Asian art throughout history. In the story, a fisherman accidentally discovered a secret village hidden in a deep vale of peach blossoms. It is an ideal world, where every villager enjoys a peaceful life and old and young alike are provided for. Isolated from the outside world for hundreds of years, they know nothing about the latest news, the current fashion trends, or which emperor is on the throne. Nor do they care to join the exciting outside world. Time loses its meaning in this ideal place. The philosophical messages of the story are particularly intriguing for our fast-paced modern society. What are we pursuing? And what does time mean in the twenty-first century?