Western and Chinese landscape painting - Research Paper Example

College Introduction Landscape painting is an art that involves the drawing of natural scenery such as the sky, forests, mountains, rivers, and ridges. Most of these things are arranged in a particular manner or in a harmonic way that brings out a natural scene. Landscape painting has been there for many years and its origin can be traced back to the Ancient Rome, Egypt, Greece, and East Asia where landscape painting used to focus more on human and plants rather than the general landscape scenery1. Most of these landscapes do exist up to now because they were and are still being used as archeological sites. Although landscape painting is believed to have been practiced all over the world, it is the Western and Chinese landscape paintings that are more predominant in archeological sites and art galleries that focus on landscape painting2. Body Western and Chinese cultures depict a wide range of landscape painting. In most paintings, the background always contains a physical feature. In China, this is always accompanied with a waterfall or a mountain while in the West it is accompanied by rivers and lakes3. To discus more about Western and Chinese landscape paintings, we will use landscape painting (1), Poet on a Mountain c. 1500 by Shen Zhou, to represent Chinese culture, as well as landscape painting (2), Poppies Blooming by Claude Monet to represent the Western culture. Landscape painting (1); Poet on a Mountain c. 1500. Landscape painting (2); Poppies Blooming These two cultures had their own differences in terms of philosophy, subject, aesthetics, techniques, and materials in landscape painting 4. In Chinese culture, landscape painting was inspired by philosophy, represented by pure landscape and devoid of human life. Most of the landscapes were based on imaginary sceneries, such as mountain, but there was a common problem in bridging the gap between the foreground and background, or objects in far range. To solve this problem, most Chinese painters used a dead ground or the use of mist. However, in Chinese culture, there was a slight difference between the East and West Asia in the landscape paints; in West Asia there was the classification of art according to its prestige and cultural value. This practice was known as hierarchy of genres while in East Asia the form of mountain-water ink was the most common and valued form of landscape art. East Asia dealt with imaginary landscape while the West painters dealt with history painting. With time, they required landscape painting and a poem inscribed on the painting with the use of figures to make landscape look more religious. A good example is one of the Chinese masterpieces by Shen Zhou which combined the painting and the poem as a religious saying: “White clouds encircle the mountain waist like a sash. Stone steps mount high into the void where the narrow path leads far. Alone, leaning on my rustic staff I gaze idly into the distance. My longing for the notes of a flute is answered in the murmurings of the gorge5." In Western culture, landscape painting philosophies were based on religious practices and carried significant spiritual weight. Also in the Western culture, artists tried to make the landscape art as real as possible6. In Chinese culture, their landscape painting aesthetics involved a lot of white or blank space, which allowed the observer to fill the void with his or her own imagination enabling different viewers to have different view of the painting, as this will depend on what or how they decided to fill the void. In addition, the Chinese landscape painting allowed the viewer to focus on a particular image, as most of the paintings were usually blank, as in filled with mist or fog, to scrap the unwanted information, and with focused imagination allowed the observer to express his or her fillings to the image easily. In Western culture, landscape painting aesthetics included all the details that a naked eye could see when looking at a scene and this was to help the viewer to feel as if he or she was present t the exact natural site, not looking at a landscape painting. The painters did this to make the observer to appreciate nature and its beauty and by doing so, the landscape painting was drawing the observer close to the creator. These two cultures each had its own unique way of drawing their painting or the techniques of representing landscape painting. The Chinese used lines to compose their pictures. They would classify the landscape painting in two parts: the host and the guest; for the host, they would use the mountains, which were believed to be sacred, and this can be seen in the above painting by Shen Zhou, while the guest would be represented by people, trees, and homes. Chinese landscape paints were black and white, they would only use and brush and render a complicated landscape scene in a simple manner. On the other hand, Western culture would make sure its landscape painting looked as the original natural landscape scene as much as possible. They would use different colors while painting and different effects to bring shadows in the picture making the viewers feel the environment in the actual site. They would bring out the hue and some shading to indicate the time of day when the painting was drawn7. In Western landscape painting, the subject that they emphasized more was religious because they clearly brought out the connection of humans and their creator by making sure that the background was well connected with the foreground. Here, the viewer felt like being in the foreground and the creator being in the background, but Chinese landscape painting used the landscapes, for instance, the mountains, to emphasize that life is a sacred gift from the creator. The landscape in Chinese culture seemed to be far from the viewer of the painting and this brings out the sense and filling of a scared place which cannot be assessed easily but only by the chosen ones and the mighty. The two cultures almost used the same materials but the difference was in the following: Chinese culture was using the Chinese writing brush on a Chinese paper which was either rice or silk one, while Western culture used painting brush on a sheet of a fabric material. Conclusion Landscape painting gives a lot of space for the viewers to employ their own imagination in different situations and this really helps in creative thinking, which is an important aspect in day-to-day activities in life. It also allowed the painters and the viewers to connect to the natural sceneries portrayed in the paintings. Bibliography Bazarov, Konstantin. Landscape painting. London: Octopus Books, 1981. Jeffares, Bo. Landscape painting. New York: Mayflower Books, 1979. Harrison, Birge. Landscape painting. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1909. Sickman, Laurence. In Sickman L & Soper A, "The Art and Architecture of China", Pelican History of Art, 3rd ed Penguin (now Yale History of Art), LOC 70-12567, 1971. Szabo, Zoltan. Landscape painting in watercolor. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1971. Wilton, Andrew, & T. J. Barringer. American sublime: landscape painting in the United States, 1820-1880. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002. Read More