Chinese Art

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HERITAGE, ART AND MULTIMEDIA (IJHAM), 2022

Along with its multiple levels of importance, characterising a Chinese traditional painting in terms of its aesthetic arrangement-composition and visual meaning may be a challenging undertaking; yet, it also presents evolving features and constantly expanded connotations. A 'landscape painting' is cultural (cultivated) rather than natural (innate); it is a cultural interpretation that renews the physical environmental reality. In the visual arts, 'landscape' representation has acted as an emblem, playing a key role in the construction of China's and Europe's identities. Landscape ink-painting on Chinese paper or silk has a long history in China, stretching back over a thousand years, in contrast to Europe, where it evolved and developed considerably later. What is vital in this study is to determine how Chinese ink-painting has remained traditional in comparison to the evolution of western arts. Every civilization has its own aesthetic limits and standards for evaluating the manifestation of beauty through its arts, which impact its pursuit and creation. Chinese philosophers have a fundamentally conceptual understanding of nature that supports their belief in the cosmos' order and harmony. Shānshuǐ-huà (山水画 ), akin to knowledge of the Western 'landscape,' has been a continuous practise and vital feature of Chinese culture since the Song dynasty (960AD-1290AD), one of China's finest creative epochs. This ink-painting tradition is linked to calligraphy methods known as painted poetry. As a result, in Chinese traditional painting, empty space is balanced against the painted area, the artwork keeps the beauty and balance the results; in Western art, figure-ground plays a visual equilibrium. This study analyses fundamental visual knowledge that embraces holistic aesthetic judgement for none-Chinese audiences; the concerns covered provide a flexible way for leading audiences in evaluating many aspects of Chinese ink-painting using their own understanding and imagination.

2020

MA Thesis - Università di Bologna - 2014 A comparison between the Four Great Masters of the Yuan Dynasty's landscapes of the mind and the contemporary Chinese artist Wu Guanzhong's artworks.

Proceedings of European Society For Aesthetics. Volumn 8 /2016 p. 247-268, 2016

‘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.

An edited translation of Kohara Hironobu’s 2000 revision of his study, ‘Joshi shin zukan’ 〈女史箴図巻〉, about the painting attributed to Gu Kaizhi (c. 344-c. 406) in the British Museum, originally published Kokka 《国華》 nos 908 (Nov 1967), 17-31 (part 1) & 909 (Dec 1967), 13-27 (part 2). Also downloadable at: http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/12784/.

This essay was written for 'Convergences – Chen Wen Hsi Centennial Exhibition" organised by the Singapore Art Museum in 2006. Chen Wen Hsi was one of Singapore's most significant and influential modern artists of the 20th century. The essay examines the development of his artistic practice and interests against the wider context of art historical developments in China and Singapore.

Jiaqian Zhu, 2018

2011

This thesis examines the cultural networks that connected people holding common ideological values in the Tokugawa period by surveying a range of visual representations of the Orchid Pavilion Gathering. It explores the Tokugawa social phenomena that gave rise to the sudden boom in the Orchid Pavilion motif and how painters of different classes, belonging to different schools, such as Kano Sansetsu, Ike Taiga, and Kubo Shunman, came to develop variations of this theme in order to establish cultural identity and to negotiate stronger positions in the relations of social power. Probing the social environment of artists and their patrons, I demonstrate how distinct types of Orchid Pavilion imagery were invented and reinvented to advance different political agendas. The legendary gathering at the Orchid Pavilion in China took place in 353 CE, when Wang Xizhi invited forty-one scholars to participate in the annual Spring Purification Festival. At this event, Wang Xizhi improvised a short ...

The Blackwell Companion to Asian Art, ed. Rebecca Brown and Deborah Hutton, 2011

This was for Art History 2 final, I looked how Chinese and Japanese Literati painting have had an influence on the world, and my study of graphic design principles.