A LANDSCAPE IN MOTION – by The Huntington Museum of Art
In Without Us, Wang Mansheng, the 2025 Cheng Family Foundation Visiting Artist in the Chinese Garden, has depicted intricate scenes of plants, rocks, and water on delicate silk panels. Suspended from the gallery’s ceiling, the panels create a three-dimensional painted landscape through which visitors can wander. During their journey, viewers can gaze through the translucent silk to see the shadowy forms of other visitors entwined with the mountains and streams. Humans and nature become connected, even as they remain separate. (from the Huntington website)
Following is Howard’s note to Mansheng Wang & Helena Kolenda after our visit in May 2025 to Mansheng’s Huntington exhibition, “A Landscape in Motion,” the last one Howard would attend before his diagnosis the next month of the cancer that would take his life. As Howard was dealing with how to live out what time he had left, he thought he better write a brief review of the exhibition, that kind of thing always foremost in his mind. By the time of writing, Howard had lost use of his left hand. He struggled to support his iPhone with that hand and with his right hand typed out with one finger the following message and review. Howard’s dignity, grace and his enduring devotion to art, evident even in his final days.
Dear Friends: I write belatedly to thank you for your most gracious hospitality at the Huntington. The lovely card and message were reminders of the great honor you both paid us with your attention at the reception and assistance in the stunning exhibition. Thank you, thank you precious friends!
“The Dimensions of “Without Us” – by Howard Rogers
On the evening of May 15, 2025, the extensive rose gardens at the Huntington in San Marino, CA, were in full and glorious bloom, a delight to the visual and olfactory senses. Further aesthetic delights awaited visitors in the Studio for Lodging the Mind located in the enchanting Chinese garden. Twenty-two ink and brown walnut ink monochrome hanging scrolls were arranged in a unique spatial configuration created by the artist; rather than being hung flat against the wall and arranged in serried rows, the paintings are arranged so as to require the viewer to move through space over time to reveal the sequence in its entirety.
The individual panels can be viewed individually while many are composed to form pairs or trios with neighbors. The vertical orientation is appropriate for the subjects of elongated trees, awesome peaks, and exuberant bamboo groves—but also can create horizontal sequences to portray a lotus pond or mountain range. While paintings are inherently two-dimensional in nature, skillful compositional overlappings and shading foster a visual illusion of three-dimensionality. Ink-monochrome painting has a millennium long tradition in China, and the very concept of large-scale landscapes in ink alone originated in the 10th—11th century, so there is a dimension of history, of time, here as well.
As one moves along the designated path through this physical environment, two important elements of Wang’s creative vision become clear: one is the ability to see ahead to the future—what one will enjoying in a moment or two—as well as back to the past, the place one just left behind. This brings to the fore the artist’s expertise derived from his earlier work in television, where the point-of- view is always of paramount importance.
The second element was his daring decision to mount the paintings without any supporting backing sheet. While increasing the fragility of the work, reducing it to a single layer of silk, the painting itself can now be viewed from both sides, adding yet another dimension to the experience, that of visual reversal.
True to the meaning of the title, “Without Us,” no humans appear at all to disturb the tranquil lives of the rabbit, silkworms, and ducks that do live in that bucolic natural environment. The point of the artist—perhaps even the main one—is that in our absence, Nature flourishes; we think we don’t need butterflies, but crops do, and we need food to live. So it is to our peril that we continue to ignore the interconnectedness of all things.
Although our presence here is not explicitly acknowledged, it is implied, even required, for all paintings are designed to communicate with the viewer’s minds or emotions, or, as here in Wang’s splendid creation, with both. We thank the artist for his passionate, articulate, beautiful, and so-timely message, and the Huntington for providing an appropriate and truly glorious natural setting.