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.

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.

The endgame, and the Qing eclipse1

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 23-48
Author(s):  
James Elkins
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Chinese Painting ◽  
Landscape Painting ◽  
The West ◽  
Unusual Structure ◽  
Western Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
Contemporary Painting ◽  
Chinese Landscape Painting

Presented as an archival text for the Journal of Contemporary Painting, James Elkins’ ‘The endgame, and the Qing eclipse’ is an abridged version of the the final chapter of a book-length study, Chinese Landscape Painting as Western Art History (Hong Kong University Press, 2010). Elkins demonstrates the unusual structure of the history of Chinese painting, whereby the Ming decline and Qing eclipse have no real parallels in the West. Yet, as a counter-hypothesis, he argues that Late Ming and Qing artists appear to art history as a form of postmodernism. In itself, this represents a nuanced reading of the temporalities of modern and postmodern periods (which challenges comparative approaches and indeed the fundamental structures of western art history). Crucially, the account provides ways of thinking about how Chinese landscape painting is viewed through the lens of art history, a discipline that Elkins claims is partly, but finally and decisively, western.

The Religious Experience of the Landscape Ruskin and Nature

2020 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-199
Author(s):  
Sándor Radnóti
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Landscape Painting ◽  
Social Critic ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Harsh Criticism ◽  
Scientific Truth ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Artistic Tradition

AbstractThis paper reconstructs Ruskin’s work from the perspective of the landscape, building upon the assumption that Modern Painters played a cardinal role in the emancipation of the genre. This reconstruction is complicated by the internal contradictions within the work: it cannot be regarded as a systematic work of philosophy, but belongs rather to the genre of sage writing. In volume I, Ruskin approached the landscape not from an aesthetic point of view, but from the direction of scientific truth. The aesthetic consequence of this was his anti-mimetic attitude, which differentiated between the imitation of nature and the uncovering of the truths of nature, and in this respect, he considered Turner the greatest master who had ever lived. Truth takes precedence over all aesthetic considerations, and for this reason Ruskin was resolutely against artistic tradition. Seen from his perspective, the history of landscape painting appeared as a series of scientific illustrations, which, with the forward march of science, came ever closer to truth-to-nature. The other two essential conditions of art, the other side of truth, were its moral and religious messages. Beauty is the work of God, and God must be praised in His work, in Nature. Only later did Ruskin introduce a historical dimension to the experience of the landscape. The modern era is characterised by the rise of the pre-eminent interest in the landscape, accompanied by a parallel decreasing interest in gods, saints, ancestors and humans. This later became the main motif of Ruskin’s activities as a social critic and reformer. In relation to the loss of faith and the prospect of regaining it, Ruskin saw landscape painting as the representative art of the modern era. In the later volumes of Modern Painters, Ruskin carefully distinguished between the task of science, which is to investigate the essence and uncover the truths of material nature, and the task of art, which is to explore the possible viewpoints or aspects of material nature. In volume V of Modern Painters he firmly asserted – in diametric contradiction to his earlier views – that the greatness and truth of Turner did not rest on scientific truth, for in this respect the artist was completely ignorant. This paper interprets and evaluates Ruskin’s extraordinarily harsh criticism of Claude Lorrain, which contrasts with the fact that Turner spent almost his entire life idolising and attempting to rival Claude.

Bilingual and intersemiotic representation of distance(s) in Chinese landscape painting: from yi (‘meaning’) to yi (‘freedom’)

Semiotica ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (225) ◽  
pp. 293-311
Author(s):  
Chengzhi Jiang ◽  
Chunshen Zhu
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Systemic Functional Linguistics ◽  
Landscape Painting ◽  
Spiritual Journey ◽  
Sign Systems ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Spiritual Freedom ◽  
Chinese Landscape Painting ◽  
Chinese And English

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.”

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
Keyword(s):  
Han Dynasty ◽  
Landscape Painting ◽  
Chan Buddhism ◽  
Blue Mountains ◽  
The Past ◽  
Eastern Cultures ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Chinese Landscape Painting ◽  
Far Eastern ◽  
The Silk Road

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 ...

scholarly journals Metaphysics of Nature: art-critic analysis of Chinese paysage painting by T. Burckhardt

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
И.В. Фотиева ◽  
М.Ю. Шишин
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Painting ◽  
Landscape Painting ◽  
The West ◽  
Sacred Art ◽  
Chinese Landscape Painting

Статья посвящена наследию еще недостаточно известного в России  философа, культуролога, искусствоведа Титуса Буркхардта. Дается обзор раздела одной из его ведущих работ «Сакральное искусство Востока и Запада. Принципы и методы», посвященного пейзажной китайской живописи. Отмечается точность и глубина проводимого Буркхардтом анализа как художественно-выразительных средств, так и философско-метафизических основ китайской пейзажной живописи, а также ее отличия от близких европейских течений. The article is devoted to the heritage of the philosopher, culturologist, art critic Titus Burkhardt, who is still not well known in Russia. The authors give an overview of the section of one of his leading works "Sacred art of the East and the West. Principles and methods", dedicated to landscape Chinese painting note the accuracy and depth of the analysis conducted by Burkhardt, both artistic expressive means, and the philosophical and metaphysical foundations of Chinese landscape painting, as well as its differences from close European art currents.

scholarly journals Research on Planning and Design of Urban Architectural Color in Changchun

2020 ◽  
Vol 165 ◽  
pp. 04029
Author(s):  
Zhang Cui
Keyword(s):  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Design Guidelines ◽  
The Other ◽  
New Era ◽  
Color Design ◽  
Planning And Design ◽  
Surrounding Environment ◽  
The Aesthetic

Architecture is the soul of city color. The planning focus of city color is city architecture, especially the planning control of the main wall color of street buildings. The design of architectural color should not only consider the surrounding environment of the building, the content of the building and the building materials, but also proceed from the aesthetic needs and conform to the principle of color engineering. On this basis, the plan proposes color design guidelines and relies on scientific and standardized “urban building color design guidelines” to achieve the purpose of maintaining the original appearance of history and creating a new era style. Besides the traditional buildings, the other “architectural color guidelines” should leave more room for manoeuvre and not restrict the creative thinking of architects.

Adorno’s Philistine: the Dialectic of Art and its Other

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Paul Ingram
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Critical Potential ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Critical Turn ◽  
The Ideal

Abstract Theodor Adorno’s philistine functions as the other of art, or as the ideal embodiment of everything that the bourgeois aesthetic subject is not. He insists on the truth-content of the derogation, while recognising its unjust social foundation, and seeking to reflect that tension in a self-critical turn. His model of advanced art is negatively delimited by the philistinism of art with a cause and the philistinism of art for enjoyment, which represent the poles of the aesthetic and the social. The philistine is also the counterpart to the connoisseur, with the interplay between them pointing to his preferred approach to aesthetics, in which an affinity for art and alienness to it are combined without compromise. However, Adorno fails to realise fully the critical potential of the philistine as the immanent negation of art and aesthetics.

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