Ashmolean Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

The Mustard Seed Garden Landscape Scroll

Landscape painting in China is a skill traditionally learnt through copying. Xu Bing’s Mustard Seed Garden Landscape Scroll explores the role of copying through China’s most famous work of art instruction, the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting. The scroll is displayed here together with editions of the painting manual from Oxford University’s Bodleian Library. The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting was first published in 1679. Students and amateurs have used it as a textbook ever since, though some have regarded it as a cliché. Xu Bing selected images from it and rearranged them in a woodblock print to create a model landscape handscroll. Textbooks, in his view, are the most important type of book: they are depended on by people with limited knowledge, and so should be particularly reliable, concise and correct. He has recently edited two textbooks on art for school and university students.

The Mustard Seed Garden Landscape Scroll (LI2007.77)

Click here to listen to the artist describe how the Mustard Seed Garden Manual is used by artists and students.

Click here to find out about the artist’s thoughts on the Mustard Seed Manual and its relevance to Chinese culture.

The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting

The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting芥子园画传 (1679) is an instruction manual for students and amateurs of Chinese painting. It was published in 1679 and has been available in print ever since. The manual reproduces examples from paintings by famous artists of the Song (960–1279), Yuan (1279–1368) and Ming (1368–1644) dynasties. Xu Bing selected images from it and rearranged them in a woodblock print to create a model landscape handscroll.

The volumes displayed here show images that Xu Bing has used in the Mustard Seed Garden Landscape Scroll. They are selected from ten different editions in the collection of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. The Bodleian began acquiring Chinese books and manuscripts around 1600.

The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (LI2009.1)   The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (LI2009.2)   The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (LI2009.3)   The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (LI2009.4)

The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (LI2009.5)   The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (LI2009.6)   The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (LI2009.7)   The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (LI2009.8)

The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (LI2009.9)   The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (LI2009.10)   The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (LI2009.11)   The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (LI2009.12)

Click here to listen to David Helliwell, Head of Chinese Collections at the Bodleian Library, discuss collecting, lending and exhibiting iconic works such as the Mustard Seed Garden Manual.

The Forest Project

Xu Bing has been engaged in teaching ever since his graduation in 1981 from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and in 1989 won a national award for the most outstanding achievement by a young teacher in higher education. More recently, in 2005, he participated in Human/ Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet, organised by the international conservation organisation Rare in conjunction with UNESCO. Xu Bing went to Kenya, where he taught children aged seven to thirteen to think about their local landscape and environment in terms of language and history, and then to create pictures. These pictures were sold online and the funds raised were used to buy trees to plant in deforested areas of the country. In this way art engaged with society to benefit man and nature. The project has continued in Hong Kong and Brazil and online.

Xu Bing produced the three large paintings displayed here in response to children’s works made as part of his Forest Project.

Forest Project 1 (LI2007.78)   Forest Project 2 (LI2007.79)   Forest Project 3 (LI2007.80)

Click here to listen to Oxford University's Artist in Residence, Weimin Hei, talk about the influence of Xu Bing.

Click here to listen to the curator discuss the Forest Project as part of Xu Bing’s oeuvre.

Children’s drawings

These pictures were made by children aged 8–12 in Kenya (2008) and Shenzhen, China (2009) as part of Xu Bing’s Forest Project. The drawings use nature and words to make images of trees. It was in response to these and other drawings that Xu Bing produced the large paintings displayed above.

Forest Project.   Forest Project.   Forest Project.   Forest Project.   Forest Project.   Forest Project.

Forest Project.   Forest Project.   Forest Project.   Forest Project.   Forest Project.   Forest Project.

Forest Project.   Forest Project.   Forest Project.   Forest Project.

Click here to view images of Xu Bing teaching children in Hong Kong and Kenya as part of The Forest Project.

Activities for this exhibition

These activities encourage the exploration of certain motifs found in Xu Bing’s work. In this online version of the exhibition, try zooming into the images of objects featured here.

Landscapes

1. Click here for an activity relating to the artist’s early drawings of the ‘Forestry Industry’.

2. Click here for an activity relating to artist’s depiction of farm animals in his sketches of the ‘Countryside’.

3. Click here for an activity relating to the artist’s depiction of animals and insects in his small woodcuts.

Landscripts

4. Click here for an activity relating to the artist’s use of picture-letters in his ‘ Helsinki Sketchbook’.

5. Click here for an activity relating to the artist’s use of picture-letters in his third Suzhou scroll.

6. Click here to learn about the development of Chinese script, and try to find some in the Museum’s Eastern Art galleries.

Teaching and Learning

7. Click here for an activity relating to the artist’s arrangement of figures from the Mustard Seed Garden Manual in his landscape scroll.

8. Click here to listen to Tish Francis, Director of Oxford’s Story Museum, recite a Chinese folktale adapted by Xu Bing called ‘The Magic Paintbrush’.

9. Click here for an activity to discover the use of language, script and symbols across cultures and times at the Ashmolean Museum.