Composition of scenery in Japanese pre-modem gardens and the three distances of Guo Xi

摘要

Landscape painters in the ancient Far East and the garden makers of former times in Japan were not acquainted with a visual perspective constructed from one vanishing point on the horizon as valued in the West ever since the European Renaissance. Their ideas on composing the scenic relied on a more dynamic approach. The lack of a central perspective converging on the horizon is basic to understand traditional East Asian landscape composition. Two Chinese landscape painting theories provide detailed information on perspective composition. Guo Xi's eleventh-century The Lofty Message of Woods and Streams was turned into a practical guide for the painter with the printed Manual of the Mustard Seed Academy of the late seventeenth century. Both were compilations of centuries of existing practice.