A view from China: Reflecting back on James Elkins’ Chinese Landscape Painting

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 49-54
Author(s):  
Zang Yingchun
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Ecology ◽  
Artistic Expression ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Landscape Painting ◽  
Unique Form ◽  
Cultural System ◽  
Chinese Landscape Painting ◽  
Complete History

In this article, the author, a scholar based in China, reflects on James Elkins’ book Chinese Landscape Painting. She notes that the development of Chinese art has a complete history. As a cultural system that has grown and developed in a long and relatively isolated state, it has formed a unique philosophical aesthetic thought and a unique form of artistic expression. Chinese landscape painting is a part of this complex and rich cultural system, and it would be meaningless to discuss Chinese landscape painting in isolation from this ever-changing cultural ecology.

Wilderness in Ancient Chinese Landscape Painting

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-266
Author(s):  
LuYang Chen ◽  
Ziao Chen ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Ecological Environment ◽  
Chinese Painting ◽  
Landscape Painting ◽  
Chinese People ◽  
Unique Form ◽  
Natural Landscape ◽  
Cultural Connotation ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Chinese Landscape Painting

Chinese painting is dominated by landscape painting, which is a unique form of artistic expression for Chinese people, while landscape generally refers to nature. Wild natural landscape can be called “wilderness,” which embodies the vitality and upward vitality of nature, and also contains unique cultural characteristics. “Wilderness” is the most important “original ecological” environment in the natural environment. Its existence has natural, ecological, and aesthetic significance. It is nature in its primitiveness and ecology in its wildness; the aesthetic lives on in it. Compared with Western landscape painting, it pays particular attention to realism, good at depicting beautiful natural scenery and recording the reality of scenery. On the other hand, Chinese landscape painting pays more attention to the expression of connotation. Chinese landscape painting focuses on nature, takes meaning as its purpose and pursues culture. Chinese landscape painting is the outstanding expression of wilderness spirit, which is mainly manifested in three aspects: (1) Chinese landscape painting is of the same origin as “Tao” (道); (2) the “wilderness” in landscape painting has a strong vitality; (3) “wilderness” has a special cultural connotation. China’s wilderness is not ecological, but is vibrant; not in the dust, but out of the dust; not in nature, but in culture.

The Peircean order of signification and its encoding system in Chinese landscape painting

Semiotica ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (221) ◽  
pp. 199-218
Author(s):  
Lian Duan
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Vertical Dimension ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Landscape Painting ◽  
Flowing Water ◽  
Horizontal Dimension ◽  
Formal Level ◽  
Visual Order ◽  
Chinese Landscape Painting ◽  
The Way

AbstractApplying Peirce’s semiotics to the study of art history, this essay explores the order of signification in the Peircean theory and the visual order in Chinese landscape painting. Since the purpose of Chinese landscape painting is not simply to represent the beauty of scenery but to encode and manifest the philosophy of Tao, then, the author argues that the establishment of the encoding mechanism in Chinese landscape painting signifies the origination, development, and establishment of this genre in Chinese art history. In this essay, the Peircean order of signification is described as a T-shaped structure, consisting of a horizontal dimension of signs (icon, index, and symbol) while and a vertical dimension of the signification process (representamen, interpretant, and object). Correspondingly, the visual order in Chinese landscape painting is also described as a T-shaped structure as well: the horizontal dimension at the formal level consists of three signs (mountain path, flowing water, and floating air, the three constitute a compound sign), while the vertical dimension at the ideological level consists of three concepts (the way in nature, the metaphysical Way of nature, and the Tao). The significance of this order is found in re-interpreting the formation of landscape painting in Chinese art history.

Interpretation of Li Gonglin Ecological View of Landscape Painting Based on Chinese Soil Smoke Culture

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 3344-3351
Author(s):  
Xinquan Ma ◽  
Xiaofang Yao ◽  
Kwon Hwan
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Landscape Painting ◽  
Environmental Aesthetics ◽  
Northern Song Dynasty ◽  
Modern Cities ◽  
Northern Song ◽  
The Aesthetic

Objectives: Cigarettes are not goods that have existed in China since ancient times, but consumer goods that were introduced into China by western countries and accepted and developed by Chinese people in modern times. The application of Chinese soil smoke culture in Li gonglin’s landscape painting is studied in this paper. Methods: From the perspective of art history, landscape painters in the Northern Song Dynasty, as a prosperous period of Chinese art history landscape painting, thought deeply about painting from the artistic form of nature, and integrated their own view of environment into their creation, forming many landscape aesthetic paradigms. Results: This paper focuses on the interactive dialogue between the literati and the environment with the involvement of how space planning and governance are allocated. It is aimed at the global perspective in the Anthropocene and a local position in the Northern Song Dynasty. Localization is not only the exploration of the ecological approaches of China and the West in space, but also the integration of the past and the present, observing its ecological image from the perception and practice of traditional environmental aesthetics to the harmonious coexistence of modern cities and nature. Conclusion: Local tobacco is not a traditional local consumer product. Under the public’s praise, it has gradually formed a unique thing in China - cigarette culture. People in the society are not only the observers of the environment, but also the participants of the environment. Through the aesthetic configuration of the classification of environmental belonging space and the transformation of the image and vision into such realistic or ideal landscapes as “Longmian Villa”, it goes towards ecological holism. Therefore, from the perspective of environmental aesthetics research, Li Gonglin’s paintings have research value.

Shitao and the Enlightening Experience of Painting

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 93-112
Author(s):  
David Chai ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Landscape Painting ◽  
Classical Approach ◽  
The Song Dynasty ◽  
Scientific Approach ◽  
Old Masters ◽  
Chinese Landscape Painting

Having reached its zenith in the Song dynasty, Chinese landscape painting in the dynasties that followed became highly formulaic as artists simply copied the old masters to perfect their skills. This orthodox approach was not accepted by everyone however; some painters criticized it, arguing it was better to learn the ideas behind the techniques of the old masters than to blindly copy them. Shitao was one such critic and his Manual on Painting exemplifies his desire to disassociate himself from the classical approach to painting. This paper will investigate the three major themes of Shitao’s text—the holistic brushstroke, brush and ink, and the method of no-method—in order to show how they shaped his view of landscape painting and how said paintings subsequently embodied them. Unlike the near-scientific approach taken by his contemporaries and predecessors, Shitao paints to capture the unifying simplicity of nature, an onto-aesthetic experience that is profoundly enlightening.

The Synthesis of Rock Textures in Chinese Landscape Painting

2001 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 123-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Der-Lor Way ◽  
Zen-Chung Shih
Keyword(s):  
Landscape Painting ◽  
Chinese Landscape Painting
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