Guo Xi on Painting the Invisible Gaze of the Dao

For the Song dynasty painter and theorist Guo Xi, Daoism runs like veins through his Lofty Appeal of Forests and Streams, helping it become one of the greatest works of landscape painting theory in China. This essay explores the influence Laozi and Zhuangzi had on Guo Xi's thought, paying particular attention to the latter's implementation of spirit, nature, and incompleteness. Guo Xi succeeded in giving these Daoist themes an aesthetic significance that had yet to be fully realized by his predecessors, while expounding them in a manner that remained faithful to the texts from which they were drawn. While Guo Xi was not the first person in China to employ the principles of Daoist philosophy in their discourse on landscape painting, his ability to synthesize them into a cohesive representation of the invisible gaze of the Dao led to his becoming one of the most eminent painters and aesthetic theorists in the history of Chinese aesthetics.

Explore into the Infinite Wonder in Time and Space--On the Pursuit of the Time-Space on an Idea-Sketching Stage in Chinese Opera

Chinese opera is a highly comprehensive opera that attaches paramount importance to imagery. The qualities of simulative performance, including its orientation, immediacy and flowability, constitutes the transcendent and free time-space of the art of Chinese opera. Considering the profound impact that the spirit of idea-sketching (Xieyi in Chinese, which is an aesthetic conception in China that emphasizes on capturing the spiritual essence rather than the superficial appearance) in Chinese traditional culture has on opera creation, an exploration into the impressionist views in Chinese traditional culture will be necessary to understand the beauty of idea-sketching Chinese opera. The creation of opera directors should be based on the traditional Chinese aesthetics centering on spirit conveying and essence capturing. Opera directors need to explore how the idea-sketching spirit contained in Chinese traditional culture can be applied and extended on the opera stage.

The Problem of the Authenticity of the Aesthetic Concept qiyun shengdong

The article explores Xu Fuguan’s analysis and interpretation of the concept of qiyun shengdong 氣韻生動, which is considered to be one of the most important, fundamental and complex concepts in Chinese aesthetics and art. It was created by Xie He in the Wei Jin period (220–420 AD), which is marked as a turning point in the development of Chinese aesthetics. The complexity of the concept of qiyun shengdong is reflected in literary works, painting, calligraphy, and music, as well as in literary theory and the theory of painting. According to Xu Fuguan, qi refers to the external features of the artwork, while yun expresses the internal characteristics that are a matter of the human spirit. For Xu, shengdong signifies the manifestation and fusion of qi and yun in the artwork. Xu Fuguan claimed that the profound comprehension of this concept is fundamental for understanding the essence of Chinese art. The article also addresses the problem of translating this aesthetic concept into English and discusses the problem of its authenticity.