Immersion and Absorption

Abstract This paper explores the relationship between the development of painting's material formats and the viewer's experiences in China between the mid-eighth and late thirteenth centuries, with a special focus on the issues of size and scale. As various mounting formats emerged and gained their medium specificities respectively during this period, the description of paintings orients toward their material surfaces and their perceptual impact on viewers. Based on the close analysis of three paintings—Nested Rocks, Level Distance (Keshi pingyuan), attributed to Guo Xi; Nomads Hunting with Falcons (Huqi chunlie), attributed to Chen Juzhong; and Ma Lin's Scholar Reclining and Watching the Rise of Clouds (Zuokan yunqi)—as well as Middle-Period (800–1300) textual sources, this paper argues that the “silk-width” (fu), a modular unit for measuring painting sizes, informed two pivotal viewing experiences: immersion and absorption. Immersion is linked to large-scale, multi-silk-width paintings that encapsulate the viewer's physical presence, whereas absorption relates to smaller, half silk-width works that concentrate the viewer's attention on the pictorial surfaces. By examining the historical significance of painting size and scale, this paper contributes an ecological framework that connects art objects, the viewer's experiences, and the viewing environment.