Other Mindset

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Woods and Valleys of Mount Yu

Ni Zan, 1372. China, early Ming dynasty.

You are here

Thirty works are on view at a time, ten to a room. Every day at midnight UTC, the ten that have hung longest go back into storage and ten others come out, so each work hangs for three days and then rests for three. A work always returns to the same place on the same wall.

A tall ink painting with a few thin trees on a bank in the foreground, a wide stretch of empty water, low hills above, and columns of inscriptions.
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0). Select it for the full size.

Ni Zan was a wealthy man who gave away most of what he owned and spent years living on a boat, drifting among the lakes and rivers of southern China. His paintings are famous for how little they contain. Here, a few thin trees stand on a bank in the foreground. Above them is a wide expanse of empty paper, which is water, and above that rise low hills in dry, pale strokes of ink. There are no people. He inscribed a poem on the painting, and later owners added theirs. For many artists in China after him, this spare, cool style became a model of a calm and independent mind.

Look closely

  1. Count the trees in the foreground.
  2. Look at the empty space in the middle. What is it?
  3. Compare the brushstrokes in the trees with those in the hills.

While you sit

Very little, very carefully placed. Let your own mind be that empty for a moment.

Your seat in the galleries: a spare ash bench on thin slate legs, with nothing on it at all.

About the work

Title
Woods and Valleys of Mount Yu
Artist
Ni Zan
Date
1372
From
China, early Ming dynasty
Medium
Hanging scroll; ink on paper
Size
Image: 37 1/4 x 14 1/8 in. (94.6 x 35.9 cm)
Rights
Public domain
Image
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0)
Record
The museum's page for this work

The words on this page were written for the campus, not taken from the museum's label.

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