Taihu Garden Stone (0): Art, History and Details

Taihu Garden Stone (0) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In China, rocks are considered elements of nature that possess spirit and life energy. With its upward winding masses, perforations, weathered surface, and multiple viewpoints, the stone exhibits sculptural qualities and embodies constant transformation through natural forces and human intervention. A solid piece of rock, it was originally sourced from the Lake Tai region. Stones were collected, set up in gardens, or installed on scholar’s desks as miniature mountains. Traditionally, Taihu stones were the most desirable type of rock. This stone is a gift by the contemporary artist Liu Dan, known for his depictions of rocks, who calls them "the stem cells of Chinese landscape."

Object facts

• Title: Taihu Garden Stone
• Date: 0
• Culture: China, Jiangsu province, Wuxi
• Type: Stone
• Technique: Limestone
• Dimensions: 160 x 65 x 50 cm (63 x 25 9/16 x 19 11/16 in.)
• Collection: Chinese Art
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 2022.23

A detail from the museum

The donor, Liu Dan, is the most prominent and celebrated painter of rocks in contemporary China.

Collection credit

Gift of Liu Dan

Further reading listed by the museum

• von Spee, Clarissa. “Gift of a Lake Tai Stone: An image of transformation through natural forces.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine vol. 62, no. 3 (September 2022): 22–23.
• Griswold, William, Xiaofei Tian, Richard Von Glahn, Feng Zhao, S. J. Vainker, Masaaki Itakura, Jiang Wu, et al. China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta. Edited by Clarissa von Spee. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2023.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.