“‘Thereby water loses its nature:’ Fu Fei and Cosmology in Gu Kaizhi’s The Goddess of the Luo River.”

Michael Norton (PhD Candidate, Harvard University) - “‘Thereby water loses its nature:’ Fu Fei and Cosmology in Gu Kaizhi’s The Goddess of the Luo River”

The Goddess of the Luo River is perhaps one of the most well-known works of early Chinese painting, its treatment of the ill-fated romantic dalliance of the eponymous river nymph and a prince ingenious in its consideration of both vision and space. Moreover, scholars have often emphasized the prince's role as the narrative protagonist of the work, the identity with whom the viewer is meant to sympathize. At the actual center of this work, however, is the water goddess, a figure whose very existence implicates cosmological thinking, and her interactions with the prince by extension the political and social consequences of the communion between man and nature. By re-centering the nymph and her affinity for the element of water, this paper reinterprets The Goddess of the Luo River through a consideration of the painting's environmental overtones, demonstrating that water and its association with political folly were at the heart of this fourth century composition. Furthermore, in placing the painter's artistic choices within the socio-political landscape of the Jin dynasty, the presentation unveils connections to the power struggles and intrigues of the era.