Fusion into One: Exploring the Complementarity of Shitao’s Waterfall on Mount Lu and Its Inscribed Poem

Abstract

Shitao’s famous poem-painting Waterfall on Mount Lu has generated a great interest in the field of Chinese paintings. However, the purpose of the work remains a topic of discussion among scholars. From the standpoint of complementarity of poetry and painting, this paper discusses the work through a close examination of the painting and its inscribed poem. The interartistic features of the painting and the poem are interpreted in terms of their themes, structures, and imagery. The Chinese aesthetic concept of artistic mood (yijing) is employed to illustrate the connection among these elements. This paper demonstrates that the holistic approach to the poem-painting helps illuminate its Daoist theme of unity of man and nature. This paper also highlights a structural contrast between the secular world and the eternal world expressed in the peom-painting.