scholarly journals Blue mountains, empty waters: the evolution of Chinese landscape painting under the influence of Chan Buddhism

2015 ◽  
pp. 48-54
Author(s):  
Rudi Capra

In this paper I will describe the evolution of Chinese landscape painting throughout the period which led from the awareness of a primordial aesthetics to the emergence of Chan Buddhism. In fact, since the Chan tradition had a pervasive and profound impact on the Far Eastern cultures, it should be analysed in a more rigorous manner than it was in the past. In particular, my thesis is that the Chan Buddhism consistently influenced the aesthetic canons and artistic themes of the epoch, expressing through the artworks original concepts and relevant philosophical ideas. Buddhism came very early to China, brought by merchants along the Silk Road and by the sea-routes. It started spreading during the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE), and the first historical proof of Buddhist influence dates back to the 1st century CE. In 148 CE the Pali Canon was translated in Chinese by the monk An ...

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-266
Author(s):  
LuYang Chen ◽  
Ziao Chen ◽  

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.


Semiotica ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (225) ◽  
pp. 293-311
Author(s):  
Chengzhi Jiang ◽  
Chunshen Zhu

AbstractThis paper studies cross-modal distance representation in traditional Chinese landscape painting in a contemporary museum context with special reference to the classic three axes of distance, i.e. level, deep, and high “distance.” It observes how an artwork’s “meaning” can be perceived through the bilingual presentation of the “distances” to bring about the realization of a “meditative distance,” or the artist’s aesthetic aspiration for a spiritual “freedom.” Informed by the theory of three meta-functions in Systemic Functional Linguistics and Arnheim’s discussion about distance cues, the study has closely examined a classical landscape painting in conjunction with its Chinese and English bilingual museum captions, with a view to tracing out their discursive meta-functions based on the visual-verbal coherence of distance representation. In so doing, the study takes museum discourse as a holistic multimodal interactive process of different sign systems at three levels of communication (i.e. extratextual, intersemiotic, and intertextual) to enable the modern viewer to better appreciate the aesthetic aspiration nursed by the meaning of the pictorially depicted distance(s) in an ancient landscape painting. The findings of the study will not only contribute to a better aesthetic contextualization of the traditional Chinese visual arts but also, in a practical vein, to the construction of a more informed museum discursive environment conducive to a spiritual journey, or a mental transcendence, that keeps the mundane world at a “meditative distance.”


2021 ◽  
pp. 105971232199468
Author(s):  
Jeannette Pols

The response asks about the relationship between artist and audience in the RAAAF artworks. Is the artist an Autonomous Innovator who breaches the ties with the past and the environment? Or is the aesthetic practice located in the creation of relationships around these objects, hence expanding the artwork by using know-how, experiences and enthusiasm of the audience/users?


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 3344-3351
Author(s):  
Xinquan Ma ◽  
Xiaofang Yao ◽  
Kwon Hwan

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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 93-112
Author(s):  
David Chai ◽  

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.


2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodney Taveira

The combination of melodramatic and art cinematic techniques and influences in AMC’s television series Mad Men (2007¬–) reveals how a melodramatic televisuality can image novel modes of social and intimate relations and an alternative to the archetypal American narrative of the self-made man. Set in 1960s’ America, the series uses a contemporaneous and cosmopolitan California to triangulate the formal and narrative insistence of the past on the present. This triangulation is played out by Don Draper’s relations with his family, women, and his former identities and by the representation of homosexuality throughout the series. The application of Lee Edelman’s concept of “sinthomosexuality” and Richard Rorty’s “liberal ironist” reveal a queer, visual rhetoric to the show’s narrative and formal structures, forming a queer irony that allows the show to straddle the aesthetic extremes of “quality TV” (Jane Feuer) and soap opera, which, in turn, queers the exemplary American heterosexuality of Don Draper.


Hallazgos ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (18) ◽  
Author(s):  
José Arlés Gómez Arévalo

This article presents the results of work done by the research group Science- Spirituality, whose third phase is called The Concept of Natural Harmony in Regards to the Man-nature Relationship: A Dialogue between Western and Eastern Cultures. This phase is an attempt to borrow from emerging Western epistemologies together with Far East traditions,<br />primarily the ancient Chinese Taoist tradition. Taking as a starting point the contemporary mankind crisis which has been proclaimed by philosophy, science and culture and regarding that which thinkers and scientists alike, such as Husserl and Prigogine have concluded, the limitations of modern-thinking are highlighted and a thorough revision of this thinking has been proposed. This revision must be done based on<br />the sense of humanity and on the dialogue between sciences and other cultures. In this case: Far Eastern culture.<br />This research work is built upon the idea of examining our perception concerning Taoist culture, assuming that this culture is reflected in its narratives and fables and that they offer an opportunity to gain new insights and meanings regarding the world and some of the issues faced by contemporary humankind. Thus, the category crisis becomes particularly<br />important since it is understood as a challenge or opportunity in an increasingly globalized and technology-oriented world marked by problems such as inequality, exclusion, paradoxes and the contradictions of the human being, including himself, others and furthermore a permanent critical relationship to nature from which he or she has been disconnected<br />in a physical, spiritual and energetic way (Guenon, 2010, 34).


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