In contemporary Chinese art the national traditions and modern trends of the art world are especially relevant. Since the 1980s, in the works of a number of authors, interest began to manifest itself in the techniques of silk work, which was characteristic of ancient and medieval painting on scrolls, which was later replaced by more accessible drawings on paper. At the present stage, such painting has reached its heyday and is highly appreciated in the art market. The most famous (...) masters engaged in silk painting are Mu Yilin and Dong Wenzheng. The analysis of their creations allows us to see how the artists discovered the expressive possibilities of this material, including its transparency, refraction, color and tone saturation. The object of attention is the Chinese tradition of painting on silk, and the subject is the features of its development at the beginning of the XXI century on the example of the work of famous artists and the options they take into account in the compositions of techniques, figurative structure and expressive means of the old masters. The purpose of the article is to identify the main themes and artistic means that modern artists use in their silk works, as well as the option of integrating an ethno-cultural component into their work. (shrink)

This article deals with the Chinese ink painting tradition, as a paradigm in which art and life are coupled and intertwined. In fact, in Chinese classical aesthetics, art and life do not produce a dramatic tension, but are inscribed in a common process of naturalness or spontaneity. The painter has to learn how the breath, or vital energy, that flows in every single image-phenomenon, can be enlivened by the brush strokes. Moreover, the paper builds a dialogue between the (...) European and the Chinese main patterns. Showing alternately the continuity or the discontinuity between art and life, both traditions of thought display the possibility to learn a sort of “art of living”, through – and not despite – the dynamic de-coincidence that appears in the folds of human experience. (shrink)

I propose for emotion research a dynamic approach to truth in which folk theories, no matter how much they may be infested with magical thinking and peculiar beliefs, can function as potential competitors and valued interlocutors on the platform of theory construction. For demonstration, I present the ancient Chinese notion of ganlei as a counterpoint to Western metaphysics. Potential contributions of this indigenous belief system to theory and research on emotions include bringing greater clarity to existing concepts of empathy (...) and mind reading and participating meaningfully in the current debates on emotions. More important, ganlei suggests a shift of focus in emotion research from epistemological to ontological categories and from mental representations to intermental transactions. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

In this series of lectures on the painters Hsia Kuei (twelfth-thirteenth centuries), Shen Chou (fifteenth-sixteenth centuries), and Shih-t'ao (seventeenth-eighteenth centuries), Richard Edwards explores the special relationship between the self and landscape in Chinese art. These three painters, each important in his own time and deemed a master by later critics, were all concerned with the subjective in the objective world. In Chinese painting there is no clear desire to separate these two realms; rather, there is a constant, conscious (...) play between the physical reality of the world and the subjective vision of the artist. The artist is continually imitating the world--sometimes more, sometimes less--but he never denies its appearance to the point of total abstraction; nor, in the other extreme, does he claim for the physical world an existence independent of his own involvement. Richard Edwards is Professor Emeritus of East Asian Art and Art History, University of Michigan. (shrink)

According to Marxist philosophy, everything in the world is universally connected and in perpetual motion. Chinese society has gone through a long history of civilizational development. Since the modern era (1840-1919), great changes have taken place in the civilizational development of China. The transformation of social forms depends on the transformation of culture, and the approximation of culture to modernity is a prerequisite for the modernization of society. Thus, the development of society inevitably causes changes in art and culture; (...) and vice versa, the progress of art and culture, in turn, contributes to the progress of society. A clear and complex line has been traced in the development of Chinese painting over the centuries: from a high degree of integration to gradual differentiation leading to conflict, and then to integration. The development of Chinese painting as a whole shows a transformational trend from tradition to modernity, developing in a tortuous way. In this paper, a combination of research methods is used for research, mainly documentary research, descriptive research, comparative research and case study. Considering the features and trends of Chinese painting at different stages of development, we can more accurately judge the direction of development of modern Chinese painting and find ways to integrate tradition and modernity. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhen encountering something unfamiliar, it is natural to describe and understand it by reference to what is familiar. Commentary on Chinese landscape painting usually relies heavily upon analogies with Western art. James Elkins, concerned to understand the implications of this procedure, asks whether in seeing and writing about this art we ever can escape our Western perspectives. His problem is not just that he himself does not know Chinese. Even bilingual specialists or native Chinese speakers employ this (...) vocabulary, for the vocabulary of contemporary art history, developed in the West, now is the language of academic art history everywhere. We know that we are distorting our descriptions of this Chinese art, even though we don't know how to “get it right.” In the history of European painting from Cimabue to the present, it would be hard to find any Western paintings that could be confused with any art made in China, so the frequent reliance of scholars upon such comparisons seems problematic. Of course, in the near future this situation might change. Perhaps in fifty years, as China becomes more prosperous, art history will become a hybrid discipline. At that point, the situation, which Elkins analyzes, will be reversed. But such a change is a long way in the future. (shrink)

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: Chinese landscape painting is of the same origin as “Tao” ; the “wilderness” in landscape painting has a strong vitality; “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. (shrink)

In this paper, we pose a speculative encounter between Heidegger and the Chinese Song Dynasty landscape painter Xia Gui. Our intention is to reassess Heidegger’s theory of the fourfold. By placing the concept in a cross-cultural context, we argue that Heidegger was essentially correct in that the world is structured as a fold between interrelated elements. At the same time, we challenge the quantity and quality of the folded elements. If one turns to the work of Xia Gui in (...) conjunction with relevant Daoist texts, what one finds is a threefold structure to the world, composed of earth, sky, and mortals without Heidegger’s emphasis on divinities. In conclusion, we suggest that studying the folding structure of the world ought to be done through cultural comparisons of philosophical and aesthetic traditions in order to understand the potentiality for worldhood as an xfold. (shrink)

Western philosophy has been defined through the exclusion of non-Western forms of thought as non-philo-sophical. In this paper, I place the notion of what is “properly” philosophy into question by contrasting the essence/appearance paradigm governing Western metaphysics and its deconstructive critics with the more fluid, dynamic, and participatory forms of encountering and performatively enacting the world that are articulated in Chinese thinking and made apparent in Chinese painting. In this hermeneutical contrast, Western and Chinese thinking themselves are (...) interpeted as co-relational rather than as discrete, mutually indifferent or ethnocentrically nativist traditions. (shrink)

Comment on “Ansai peasant paintings: inheritance of Chinese primitive culture and primitive philosophy”.

This paper considers Western approaches at different time periods to Chinese landscape painting, with a focus on the eleventh century Chinese painter Guo Xi’s Essay on landscape painting. First, brief information will be given about the artist and his work. A brief scrutiny of a review published in 1936 will show how the Essay became influential in the West. Later publications, which appeared in 1969, 2007, and 2009 respectively, will show some changes in Western approaches to Chinese (...) landscape painting, revealing the main rhetoric of their times along with changing debates and approaches within Western art history. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.1 (2003) 64-76 [Access article in PDF] The Sign System in Chinese Landscape Paintings Cliff G. Mcmahon Paintings emerge from a culture field and must be interpreted in relation to the net of culture. A given culture will be implicated by the sign system used by the painter. Everyone agrees that in Chinese landscape paintings, the most important cultural bond is to (...) ancient Chinese Taoism, and to a lesser degree, to Confucianism. Obviously, then, the key for these landscapes is an alert understanding of Taoism, and the primary source is the book the Tao Tê Ching.Some of the most crucial elements in Taoist beliefs are often ignored in the analysis of the Taoist landscapes, and this deserves more attention. The core of Taoism lies in a philosophic and religious guess, and the guess is made as an effort to reach a high-order explanatory theory of the origin of the universe, the structure of the universe, and the best path for human life. The guess of the ancient Chinese sages goes something like this: The universe is created by an Ultimate One whose nature remains mysterious, beyond the power of words, an Absolute pervaded by the spirit of motherhood, and thus moved to the acts of creation, using two agents of creation. These two agents are invisible but real forces that operate by the tension of polarity, the dynamic interplay of negative and positive energies, much like male and female forces. The female power is called Yin, the male power Yang. The female power is seen wherever there is fluidity, softness, openness, receiving, emptiness, or darkness. The male power is at work in hardness, assertiveness, force, and light. Everything that is made is a blending of the Yin and Yang polarities, and the dynamism and flux of reality is based on the tendency of Yin and Yang to advance and retreat, the tendency of one to become the other, just as summer changes into winter, and day changes into night. In order for a man to be complete, he must learn to put on the way of woman, to be receptive. This is a very intelligent principle. [End Page 64] When we take in all our impressions of nature, and take in all the books we have read, we are in the receptive mode. The Yin female principle of emptiness has a priority over Yang in that there must be an empty space before any concrete thing comes to occupy the space. The Yin female force is seen in the low and quiet valley, and in the fluid receptivity of water. Yang is in the bold assertive mountains and in the hardness of stone. Yin appears in the graceful and flexible bending of bamboo, while Yang is in the hardness and strength of bamboo. Since Yin is associated with water, all forms of cloud and mist are symbols of Yin. Yang is action, Yin is wisdom.One of the most important aspects of Taoism is the principle that the mysterious Absolute One has permeated all of reality and serves the good of all creatures in every passing minute, asking nothing in return and offering no favoritism to any age or any group. This is obviously a sophisticated and intelligent principle for a theology. On this point, Taoism is superior to Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. Christianity might have taken a similar stand in that the gospel of John declares that the eternal logos dwells in all created things in a timeless manner, and was fully embedded in the world before the coming of the historical Jesus, but so far, Christians have almost totally ignored the opening lines of John.This philosophic core of Taoist belief compares to the great Western idea that Godhead creates by the use of cosmic agents. In the gospel of John, the logos is the agent. In chapter eight of Proverbs, Wisdom is the agent. In Plotinus, Nous is the agent. In Heraclitus, the polarities of love and hate are this agent. Sometimes the idea of cosmic agent is used to protect... (shrink)

In the process of interpreting works of pictorial art, it is easier to understand not the "style", but the "theme", that is, not how to write, but what to write. In the history of modern art, which attaches more importance to "style", the problem of "theme" is not fundamental and is among the primitive issues worthy of the attention of amateurs who do not understand art. However, sometimes it is in simplicity that the essence lies. The simplest questions that interest (...) almost everyone are the link between works of art and society. When analyzing the "topic", the subject under study is not confined to one work of art, since an integrated approach to the consideration of the problem should be used. The author's main contribution to the study of the history of the development of Chinese painting is a new perspective – the analysis of works based on the "theme". The results of the study revealed the main themes of Chinese pictorial art, identified the main reasons for referring to them, and also established their symbolic meaning, connection with philosophical and literary traditions. The important role of literary scientists in determining the directions of thematic development of Chinese landscape painting is revealed, the significance of the images of the fisherman and the traveler as carriers of the spiritual content of the landscape is determined. The conclusion is made about the prominence of certain themes in the pictorial art, depending on the processes of social development of China. (shrink)

By melodic landscape, this paper points to natural milieus such as mountains whose motifs are caught up in contrapuntal relations. With Merleau-Ponty, the structure of the world is a symphony, and the production of life which implicates both organism and environment as unfurling of Umwelt is ‘a melody that sings itself’. For the Chinese culture, mountains have been deemed virtuous in Confucianism, immortal by Daoists, and spiritual for a Buddhist to reach a substrate level of pure stream of a-subjective (...) consciousness. A Chinese painter-poet within the ‘mountain-water’ genre would consider mountains as performance of events, a concert of vibration of light, shape and sound, movement and rest. Insofar as art is to create energy transfer, Chinese artists of mountains aim at concerting with nature as organised by rhythms and conspecifics, unfolding contrapuntal melodies with all kinds of counterpoints. As Deleuze and Guattari's notion of refrains are the three forces or tempos of chaos, earth and world confronting/converging one another, this paper endeavours to find out, first, how Deleuze and Guattari's geological, organic and alloplastic stratifications can be put alongside mountains, animals, plants and arts, and second, how this notion can contribute to our new appreciation of the way Chinese mountains in arts can give out music. (shrink)

This research aims to study art and religious philosophy by analyzing the significance of Aboriginal dot painting, Sichuan opera makeup, Chinese traditional sculpture and Shu embroidery. A particular emphasis is placed upon their crucial importance for understanding the essence of various societies as well as their main spiritual and cultural tenets. The data for this study was gathered using a qualitative approach, targeted toward online museums and cultural websites, focusing on images of artworks to determine the parameters of symbolic (...) elements in terms of culture and religion. Purposeful sampling was used to identify pieces of art that not only have meaningful religious symbolisms but also different cultural backgrounds. Such sampling assures that the study embodies a wide representation of religious semiotics and a better understanding of the interaction between art and spirituality. This study shows that irrespective of culture, one can identify an analogy of how signs and icons work with the message from the divine, which is further preserved from the sacred. These art symbols embody theological metaphors on ethical, aesthetic, and cultural dimensions and express semantic meanings across cultures. Since the data for the study was limited to only online sources and predefined cultural artefacts, it may lack the field intensity of first-hand observation across cultures. Future research should identify multiple data sources and conduct additional cross-cultural comparisons of more cultures and other forms of art. (shrink)

This book discusses qiyun aesthetics in Chinese painting formulated by leading sixth to fourteenth-century intellectual elite. In light of Kant’s account of artistic genius, it considers the role of the mind in creating a painting replete with qiyun, thereby both demystifying qiyun aesthetics and illuminating some limitations in Kant’s aesthetics.

The article analyzes the ideological foundations of the emergence and evolution of landscape in Chinese painting as an independent genre from the III to the XVIII century, before the rapid integration of Western European artistic traditions. Landscape painting is considered as an expression of the state of mind of Chinese artists, the prevailing philosophical ideas, in particular Taoism, the embodiment of literary images associated with the natural origin. Despite the attention of the scientific community to the development of (...) images of nature in the art of ancient and modern China, there are few studies devoted to the causes and justification of certain processes that influenced the formation of the genre. The purpose of the study is to analyze the reasons for the appearance of images and motifs in the landscapes of Chinese artists in connection with the philosophical ideas of that time, cultural connotations in poetry and the principles of landscape art. The tasks include determining the most typical range of scenes and images in landscapes created from the III to XVIII centuries. The material is the work of Chinese artists who lived since the reign of the Wei Dynasty, during the heyday of landscapes in the era of the Tang Dynasty and up to the XVIII century. Of interest is the study of the mechanism of influence on the formation of figurative systems in Chinese landscape painting that developed in parallel poetry and landscape art. (shrink)

Chinese painting has always been a unique product of our ancient civilization, which has survived to the present day. During its 2000-year development, Chinese painting has gradually turned into a unique and non-reproducible art form capable of expressing the thoughts and feelings of the artist. Over time, Chinese painting also demonstrates a new trend of inheritance and innovative development. Changes in Chinese painting occur simultaneously with the processes of globalization. This gives rise to new research on (...) the trends of diversification of artistic creativity. The focus of artistic expression has shifted from the depiction of direct natural objects towards the spiritual plane, which is a direct result of the creative activity of artists whose aspirations are manifested in the use of traditional Chinese ink painting in combination with new methods of figurative representation and deep understanding of spiritual content. Since ancient times, artists have actively sought to harmonize and balance the subjective and objective, as well as to achieve their organic combination. This article examines traditional Chinese painting as a source and driving force of the transformation of Chinese painting、prints of the era and integration in the content of paintings、attempts to introduce the Western concept of frontal composition, as well as updating the language of painting and artistic concepts. It is argued that the fundamental driving force and the main support for the development of Chinese painting in the context of globalization should be traditions integrated with new creative elements and techniques, thus it is possible to better promote Chinese culture and inherit the essence of traditional Chinese painting. (shrink)

When art develops to a certain extent, it is bound to be mixed with traces of religion, and art influenced by religion occupies an important position in the entire history of art development. Looking at the development history of Chinese and Western painting art, we can find that there are indeed many connections between religion and art. The spiritual transmission of religion is carried out using intuition through painting art, and its vital role is reflected in the long history (...) of human civilization. This paper studies the relationship between the philosophical fusion of the original aesthetics of Chinese and Western religious painting and contemporary painting by studying the development and characteristics of religious painting in China and the West. This paper studies the differences between Chinese and Western religious doctrines and how religious figure painting embodies divinity and secularized humanity in terms of painting methods and forms of expression. The study of the philosophical fusion of the original aesthetics of Chinese and Western religious paintings and its influence on contemporary paintings fills the gap in this aspect. (shrink)

This paper presents an in-depth study and analysis of Chinese painting image classification by a multitask joint sparse representation algorithm for texture feature extraction of Chinese painting images and proposes a method to extract texture features directly for the original images. It simplifies the process of image grayscale conversion and preserves the information contained in the original Chinese painting images to the greatest extent. The algorithm uses the ideas of multicolor domain analysis and multiscale analysis, combined with (...) the traditional grayscale coeval matrix to extract texture features. Experiments show that the multiscale grayscale cooccurrence matrix algorithm outperforms the traditional grayscale cooccurrence matrix algorithm and the color grayscale cooccurrence matrix algorithm. The discriminative ability of multiple features for target recognition is integrated by multitask learning, thus improving the robustness and generalization ability of the algorithm; meanwhile, the recognition accuracy is improved by using a two-level multitask learning mode to exclude the interference of a large number of irrelevant dictionary atoms. The experimental results show that the algorithm has higher recognition accuracy and better robustness than the existing sparse representation SAR target recognition algorithm. Configuration recognition experiments are conducted on different configurations of target data, and the experimental results show that the algorithm achieves better configuration recognition accuracy than existing algorithms. (shrink)

The art of traditional painting and ceramic painting in China has a long tradition, in particular in understanding the role of color in the compositional and semantic structure. The principles of creating a color image have long been associated with national peculiarities of perception of shades and their combinations, as well as philosophical ideas. Technological features and properties of glazes imposed certain restrictions on the use of expressive possibilities of color by Chinese ceramic artists. The object of this research (...) is the works of Chinese painting and ceramics, the subject is the principles of color formation in these arts. Particular attention is paid to identifying similarities in approaches to color transfer in paintings and ceramics. The author's special contribution to the study of the problem is an attempt to characterize and compare the role of color in the art of Chinese painting and ceramic painting. The article defines a number of general principles of correlation and harmonization of colors in the two arts. The traditions of the color formation of works of various epochs are traced, the peculiarities of their evolution are established, the colors characteristic of painting and painting ceramics of different historical periods are revealed. The article examines the essence and symbolism of different colors, which are based on national philosophical and cultural ideas. The conclusion is made about the significance of the color image and color formation for the works of ceramics and painting in China. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2018 Heft: 221 Seiten: 199-218.

According to the Song critic Guo Ruoxu, the last five laws by Xie He are "open to study," while qiyun 氣韻 "necessarily involves an innate knowledge; it assuredly cannot be secured through cleverness or close application, nor will time aid its attainment. It is an unspoken accord, a spiritual communion; 'something that happens without one's knowing how'".1 For Guo Ruoxu, although the qiyun within a work refers to the quality of a painting and cannot be identical with the qiyun of (...) the artist, the ability to produce a painting replete with qiyun is determined by the painter's innate mental disposition. This idea has been echoed... (shrink)

Riassunto: La filosofia originale cinese è una sublimazione della coscienza culturale umana di base - la coscienza della vita e della riproduzione - che è l’unificazione del “Concetto di yin e yang” e del “Concetto di ciclo di vita “ in cui “lo yin e lo yang si uniscono per creare tutte le cose, e il ciclio dà una vita senza fine. La cultura originale cinese determina la visione filosofica, la visione artistica, il temperamento emotivo, la benessere psicologica e lo (...) spirito nazionale della nazione cinese. Il sistema filosofico cinese, che rappresenta l’unificazione della cosmologia, dell’epistemologia e della metodologia della nazione cinese, è un sistema filosofico completo e maturo che si è formato nella società tardo primitiva molto prima delle Dinastie Xia, Shang e Zhou. La cultura originale cinese, dalla cultura della ceramica dipinta di 7.000 anni fa fino ai giorni nostri, dalla cultura archeologica sotterranea alla cultura di massa terrestre, è un concetto ampio di belle arti, determinato da una visione filosofica dell’arte plastica di osservare gli oggetti e prendere immmagini. La cultura originale e la filosofia originale della Cina primitiva sono ancora conservate in un’eredità storica estremamente ricca e completa nella vita sociale della cultura di massa. Per questo motivo la Cina è l’unico Paese tra le civiltà antiche che non aver subito una frattura culturale. (shrink)

‘Spirit consonance engendering a sense of life’ (Qi Yun Sheng Dong) as the first law of Chinese painting, originally proposed by Xie He (active 500–535?) in his six laws of painting, has been commonly echoed by numerous later Chinese artists up to this day. Tracing back the meaning of each character of ‘Qi Yun Sheng Dong’ from Pre-Qin up to the Six Dynasties, along with a comparative analysis on the renderings of ‘Qi Yun Sheng Dong’ by experts in (...) Western academia, I establish ‘spirit consonance’ as the rendering of ‘Qi Yun’. By examining texts on painting by significant critics in Chinese art history, and by referring to specific works by painters from the Six Dynasties up to the Yuan Dynasty, I present the merits and demerits of the different interpretations by Western experts, and explore the essence of ‘Qi Yun’. Once the painter successfully captures ‘spirit consonance’ as the essential character or ‘internal reality’ of the object, and transmits it into the work, ‘Qi Yun’ further implies the expressive quality of the work beyond formal representation. Additionally, the fusion of expressive and representative functions also leaves space for further explaining the aesthetic interaction among artist, object, work, and audience. From the Six Dynasties onwards, Chinese painters have practised the expressive pursuit beyond epresentation on the basis of the unification of ‘Qi Yun’ (spirit consonance) and formal representation, although spirit consonance was valued more highly than formal likeness. (shrink)

Resumen: La concepción estética en la pintura tradicional china es un concepto esencial en el antiguo pensamiento estético chino y sirve como criterio estético supremo perseguido en la creación pictórica clásica. Los artistas utilizan obras únicas para mostrar la concepción estética en la pintura tradicional china, destacando así los rasgos distintivos de la pintura china. Este artículo realiza un análisis genealógico de la concepción artística en la pintura tradicional china y lo combina con símbolos culturales específicos para su interpretación, con (...) el objetivo de desvelar las ideas filosóficas y los conceptos culturales concentrados en la pintura tradicional china. (shrink)

This article analyzes the views of representatives of the scientific community on ancient Chinese landscape painting, emphasis is mainly placed on views that concern the spiritual qualities of landscape painting, as well as rethinking concepts that ignore the significance of sensual perception. Landscape painting is usually considered as a spiritual work of Taoism: landscape painting developed from Taoist thought, Taoist philosophy determined the identity of the artistic style and the inherent spirit of landscape painting. Moreover, some researchers even believe (...) that bodily contemplation of landscape painting means setting the very original nature of mountains and waters, and the "knowledge of the truth" is a spiritual process that is more blocked by the human capacity for sensual perception. Some of the scientists completely deny the possibility and truth of sensual perception of physical objects in landscape painting. The author of this article believes that the spiritual component of landscape painting lurks precisely in the value of sensual perception, and bodily contemplation of mountains and waters is impossible without the participation of the body, clear confirmation of which we find in the ancient Chinese theory of arts. Ancient Chinese works of art traditionally had a close connection with sensual perception through bodily contemplation. This process is not simply about capturing object information, but when the subject takes an active part in the vision of the object, when the subject gives feedback to the object, and through acquiring the object its meaning is transmitted. Only through bodily contemplation, the individual can fully feel the artistic value of landscape painting, and Taoist philosophy thus gains a real existence in landscape painting, becoming a kind of emotional thinking. (shrink)