We, the residents of modernity, live in an unquiet house.This essay examines the relationship between human subjects and their built environment, but it does so less by focusing on architecture than on what one might call ‘architecture once removed'. It is less concerned with the built environment itself than with a prevalent image of that environment in ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture, in literature, in film and painting. It is my contention that a particular unsettling image of buildings has gained (...) increasing currency in the modern epoch. I will attempt to show that such an image — and a concomitant anxiety — exists, and to offer an explanation for its provenance. (shrink)

Up to now, China's painting has not completely shaken off the influence of the spirit of European philosophy or a fundamental change in the way of viewing. The spirit of the unity of subject and object in ancient China philosophy influenced the formation and development of China's paintings. Since China Art Institute introduced figurative expressionism, a new art, into the contemporary art education system of China, it has shown its unique value in professional theory (...) and practical skills. It not only provides new opportunities for reforming contemporary art education in China but also adds a new development direction for contemporary oil painting art in China. This article attempts to reveal the existence and artistic concept of violence in contemporary Chinese oil painting through the description and analysis of painting images and artists' emotional expression, combined with interviews with artists. Based on the development of contemporary Chinese society, the rise of new literary and artistic trends, and the influence of western painting, this paper analyses the historical causes of violence in contemporary Chinese oil painting, and examines the value of contemporary Chinese oil painting in terms of aesthetics and sociology. Therefore, establishing cultural core values is still the indispensable spiritual power of contemporary artists' artistic creation. (shrink)

This study is devoted to the artistic and stylistic analysis of traditional Chinese New Year's pictures called "puhui nianhua" on the example of historical and documentary material collected in the city of Gaomi in Shandong province. It traces the changes in its form and content, the means of expression used during the five-hundred-year history of its distribution in China. The subject of attention is the development of Chinese splint pictures from the Ming Dynasty to the present. As an object, (...) we see the transformation of technological and visual features of the performance of such works within their individual varieties, which were popular in the creative activities of several generations of masters of the city of Gaomi. The purpose of the study is to get a general idea of how the main varieties of "puhui nianhua" were born and formed in the creative activity of Gaoming artisan artists. By means of artistic-stylistic, iconographic and comparative-historical analysis, the author identifies several stages in the process of formation of the tradition of making such pictures. Moreover, a typological series of Chinese New Year's splints is proposed, consisting of images of Lao and Buddhist saints, visualizations of homophonic metaphors, and a description of Chinese life. Each of the presented types differs not only in the originality of the content, but also in the set of compositional and visual means used by the authors. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Spirit Stones of China: The Ian and Susan Wilson Collection of Chinese Stones, Paintings, and Related Scholars' ObjectsGraham ParkesSpirit Stones of China: The Ian and Susan Wilson Collection of Chinese Stones, Paintings, and Related Scholars' Objects. Edited by Stephen Little. Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago in association with University of California Press, 1999. Pp. 112.Let me introduce Spirit Stones of China: The Ian and (...) Susan Wilson Collection of Chinese Stones, Paintings, and Related Scholars' Objects (edited by Stephen Little) with this quotation:The purest essence of the energy of the heaven-earth world coalesces into rock. It emerges, bearing the soil. Its formations are wonderful and fantastic. Some with cavernous cliffs, revealing their interior; some with peaks and summits in sharp-edged layers.... Within the size of a fist can be assembled the beauty of a thousand cliffs. Rocks large enough to be set up in great courtyards, small enough to be set upon a stand. Like gazing upon the peaks of Song Shan, or facing the entire range of the Meng mountains; sitting quietly, your imagination purified.... The Sage [Confucius] once said, "the humane man loves mountains," and the love of stones has the same meaning. Thus, longevity through quietude is achieved through this love.This passage articulates the very different understanding of stone—as "essential energy" rather than mere matter—that underlies the traditional Chinese passion for rock collecting and appreciating, for which even the terms "petromania" and "litholatry" seem too weak. It comes from the preface to the earliest surviving Chinese manual on the topic, Du Wan's Stone Compendium of Cloudy Forest, compiled in the early twelfth century, and is quoted by Stephen Little in his erudite and informative introduction to this magnificent catalog for a unique collection of "spirit" or "strange stones" (guai shi) and other scholars' articles. This essay nicely complements and amplifies ideas set forth some fifteen years ago by John Hay, in his now classic introduction to the catalog Kernels of Energy, Bones of Earth: The Rock in Chinese Art (New York: China House Gallery, China Institute in America, 1985).Most cultures appear to begin with a natural reverence for stone in its natural state—one thinks of the Druids, the Indian tradition, the Polynesians, Native Americans, and Australian aboriginal culture—and many seem to retain that reverence as they develop. Indeed, when seen in a global perspective, the general lack of interest in (or respect for) rock in its unhewn state that characterizes the European and Anglo-American traditions seems idiosyncratic. But Chinese culture definitely has the longest and most enthusiastic tradition of collecting stones and arranging rocks in gardens: "strange stones" figure among articles of tribute offered to the mythical emperor Yu (mid-second millennium B.C.E.), and the emperor Wu Di (second century B.C.E.) is recorded as having had rocks arranged in the gardens of his palace. [End Page 306]Stephen Little's essay gives an eloquent account of the development of the practice of stone collecting in China, delineating its relationships with poetry and painting and other arts and practices, and containing numerous translations of passages from primary sources otherwise inaccessible to the non-reader of Chinese. Most of the rocks in the catalog are of the well-known Lingbi (sonorous) and Ying types, but other kinds are represented, too. The editor also supplies a context for appreciating the paintings, scrolls, and other articles from scholars' desks that are in the catalog: brush rests, inkstones, brush holders, and so forth. The sixty-six items from the collection are represented in excellent black-and-white photographs.The book is beautifully designed and produced—and is indeed a work of art in itself with its handsome, dark blue Chinese-style case. All in all, this a stylish and informative contribution to the growing literature on a philosophically fascinating topic. [End Page 307]Graham Parkes University of Hawai'iCopyright © 2001 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

Still life as an independent painting genre in Chinese fine art was formed in the second half of the XX century under the strong influence, first of all, of Western European and Russian, and then American art. This relatively short period of time includes several periods at once, in which one or another influence dominated. However, it was the integration of the ideas and principles of foreign art schools that allowed Chinese masters to develop those features of the artistic (...) and figurative language that determined the features of the genre of still life in the space of modern art. The object of the article is the process of development of Chinese still life in the second half of the twentieth century, the subject is a set of expressive and artistic means used by Chinese artists to create a still life under the influence of foreign artistic trends. This article aims to determine the place and features of the genre of still life in the works of Chinese painters of the second half of the XX century, as well as to characterize the conformity of this genre to the trends of Russian and Soviet, as well as European art. The study concluded that this genre received rapid development in the second half of the XX century, which occurred under continuous foreign artistic influence. The occupation of a strong position in the space of Chinese art by still life and the formation of its original character with national specifics occurred at the end of the twentieth century. (shrink)

This paper attempts to delineate the relation of early Chinese views on vision and visuality to nascent reflections on painting arising in the Early Medieval period. Ever since that time, pictorial creativity has been associated with Buddhist ideas of spiritual perfection. Likewise, the Early Medieval concern for the visualization of spiritual journeys to exceptional humans (and superhumans) through imaginary landscapes seems to be of Buddhist origin. The first part of this paper gives a short sketch of the intellectual landscape (...) in which theorizing on painting since the 5th century CE first arose. The main body of the study, consisting of parts two through five, close readings of pre-Buddhist texts on vision and imagination. From these exploratory investigations it emerges that the very terms that are key in early reflections on painting such as ‘spirit’ (shen神), ‘perspicacity’ (ming明), but also ‘imagination’ (xiang想) and ‘symbol’ (xiang象) are closely related to a specific conception of seeing and visuality which is manifest in these texts. A final part sketches the possible relevance of these observations in early and pre-imperial sources for the interpretation of Chinese theories on painting. It emerges that while the rising interest in imagination since the Eastern Jin period is indeed an innovation inspired by Buddhism, the extraordinary role of the notion of ‘spirit’ in reflections about painting is closely related to earlier autochthonous traditions. The appeal to specifically Buddhist notions such as thesamādhiof free play in texts on pictorial production and contemplation appears to be of a secondary character. It seems to be mediated by the inclusion of the very word ‘spirit’ (shen) into Chinese renderings of technical Buddhist terms related to meditation, which resulted in the implicit association of this specialist vocabulary with inherited conceptions of spirit as a luminous force animating, inspiring and enlightening things, in both quite a literal and in a rather metaphorical sense. (shrink)

The article analyzes the works of Chinese artists of various historical eras who used a stylistic and thematic direction with the image of a plum blossom. The artists' appeal to images of nature to convey feelings and experiences contributed to the emergence of this image and its formation as a symbol of steadfastness and inflexibility of character. Thus, the subject of the proposed study is Chinese painting, the object is the formation of such a common motif as a plum (...) blossom. The purpose of this publication is to determine the main types of images of this image in Chinese traditional painting in the time interval from the VI century to the end of the XIV century — the most fruitful period of its formation and development. Plum blossom is of greater importance in the development of traditional landscape painting in China. For almost a millennium, the interpretation, compositional solution, as well as the technique of depicting this image have changed. The author's contribution to the development of the problem is a comprehensive analysis of images of plum blossoms in landscape paintings by Chinese artists of various historical eras, as well as the characteristics of the process of evolution and the features of the embodiment of this image. The paper traces the origins of this plot in the art works of Chinese artists, analyzes the processes of change and development of images, and characterizes the specifics of its external expression and internal content. (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)

Painted ceramics occupy an important place in ancient Chinese art and are the result of creative activity of people of primitive society. A large number of Neolithic patterns on ceramics are similar to those signs and symbols that were made on jade products of the same period. Such patterns resembled drawings made by hand and represented realistic and abstract ornaments, plant, zoomorphic patterns, etc. Thus, the subject of this study is the so-called "jade" patterns on painted ceramics of the Neolithic (...) era. The object of the study are objects of painted ceramics of the Neolithic era in China. Special attention is paid to the consideration of the specifics of ceramic products, as well as the features of their decors. The semantics of images on objects of Chinese painted ceramics is complex and ambiguous. The study revealed that it is associated with the development of human thinking, people's understanding of natural phenomena, awareness of the changing seasons, as well as the emergence of animism and totemic culture. These patterns had different interpretations, while they were not only a way of expressing the feelings and experiences of primitive people, but also a way for them to record important events from life, similar to modern memoirs. Thus, the novelty of this article is its comparative nature, manifested in the comparison of ornaments of painted ceramics and ancient Chinese jade products. (shrink)

China's regard for nature, as expressed in Sung landscape painting, is clear and well recognised. What the Chinese believed to exceed the natural world, the realm of ‘the ten-thousand things’, is less clear. The present essay tries to explore this question systematically.

“Copying”: this practice, in China as elsewhere, was and still is the first exercise of every apprenticeship at the same time as an irreplaceable technique for spreading know-how, talent, and innovation; but the place and interest accorded to it throw light on the rather special positions being taken up. Thus, when a Chinese author speaks of copy, he is thinking primarily of the “copy-image,” in two dimensions. Sculpture in China plays a religious and propitiatory role; it only indirectly (...) gives rise to reflections about art. The copies of objects thus found themselves relegated to the sphere of the utilitarian, even of the frankly deceptive (the “fakes”); they held little interest for esthetes, with a single exception: that of archaic bronzes, which I shall be dealing with later since they fall within the scope of an overall reflection on history, ritual, and the foundations of the state. Now the latter, like the bases of painting, flow from an original cultural context, the elements of which that are most resistant to comparison are language and writing. (shrink)

After 1604, Chinese art through Chinese goods rapidly and widely penetrated into European society and had a profound impact on European art and aesthetics.During the century of the popularity of everything Chinese in Europe, it was Chinese goods represented by porcelain and flowing silk that were most directly related to people's lives. From the second half of the XVII century to the second half of the XVIII century, European culture and art experienced a boom in Oriental art. A number of (...) innovative artists began to change their traditional interests and methods of painting, creating many masterpieces with a Chinese flavor. Thus, a new page was opened in the history of Eastern and Western painting. China and Europe, two advanced human civilizations.It took quite a long time before the fog of myths and legends that enveloped China and Europe, the two highest civilizations of mankind, dissipated, until the true nature of China was revealed in the XVIII century. This work is divided into the following three parts: The emergence of Chinoiserie; Rococo and Watteau painting; The decline of Chinoiserie. Documentary studies, comparative analysis and case studies are used to study the phenomenon of China's popularity, which has engulfed Europe as a direct consequence of the spread of Chinese culture in the West. (shrink)

In early China, was it correct for a woman to disobey her father, contradict her husband, or shape the public policy of a son who ruled over a dynasty or state? According to the _Lienü zhuan_, or_ Categorized Biographies of Women_, it was not only appropriate but necessary for women to step in with wise counsel when fathers, husbands, or rulers strayed from the path of virtue. Compiled toward the end of the Former Han dynasty (202 BCE-9 CE) by (...) Liu Xiang (79-8 BCE), the _Lienü zhuan_ is the earliest extant book in the Chinese tradition solely devoted to the education of women. Far from providing a unified vision of women's roles, the text promotes a diverse and sometimes contradictory range of practices. At one extreme are exemplars resorting to suicide and self-mutilation as a means to preserve chastity and ritual orthodoxy. At the other are bold and outspoken women whose rhetorical mastery helps correct erring rulers, sons, and husbands. The text provides a fascinating overview of the representation of women's roles in early legends, formal speeches on statecraft, and highly fictionalized historical accounts during this foundational period of Chinese history. Over time, the biographies of women became a regular feature of dynastic and local histories and a vehicle for expressing and transmitting concerns about women's social, political, and domestic roles. The _Lienü zhuan_ is also rich in information about the daily life, rituals, and domestic concerns of early China. Inspired by its accounts, artists across the millennia have depicted its stories on screens, paintings, lacquer ware, murals, and stone relief sculpture, extending its reach to literate and illiterate audiences alike. (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)

This chapter presents the text of a lecture on Buddhist archaeology in Republican China given at the British Academy's 2008 Elsley Zeitlyn Lecture on Chinese Archaeology and Culture. This texxt explains that Chinese archaeologists have transformed the notion of the nation and its artistic history with a series of dramatic discoveries during the Republican Period. It evaluates the impact of archaeological copies painted by Zhang Daqian and Wang Ziyun and explores how they rediscovered and popularised the history of early (...) figure painting and pottery for a Republican audience. (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)

In premodern China, elite painters used imagery not to mirror the world around them, but to evoke unfathomable experience. Considering their art alongside the philosophical traditions that inform it, _The Great Image Has No Form_ explores the “nonobject”—a notion exemplified by paintings that do not seek to represent observable surroundings. François Jullien argues that this nonobjectifying approach stems from the painters’ deeply held belief in a continuum of existence, in which art is not distinct from reality. Contrasting this perspective (...) with the Western notion of art as separate from the world it represents, Jullien investigates the theoretical conditions that allow us to apprehend, isolate, and abstract objects. His comparative method lays bare the assumptions of Chinese and European thought, revitalizing the questions of what painting is, where it comes from, and what it does. Provocative and intellectually vigorous, this sweeping inquiry introduces new ways of thinking about the relationship of art to the ideas in which it is rooted. (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)

In premodern China, painters used imagery not to mirror the world, but to evoke unfathomable experience. Considering this art alongside the philosophical traditions that inform it, this book explores the 'nonobject', a notion exemplified by paintings that do not seek to represent observable surroundings.

"Featuring a carefully selected collection of source documents, this tome includes traditional teaching tools from the Zen Buddhist traditions of China, Korea, and Japan, including texts created by women. The selections provide both a good feel for the varieties of Zen and an experience of its common core.... The texts are experiential teachings and include storytelling, poetry, autobiographies, catechisms, calligraphy, paintings, and koans. Contextual commentary prefaces each text. Wade-Giles transliteration is used, although Pinyin, Korean, Japanese, and Sanskrit terms are (...) linked in appendixes. An insightful introduction by Arai contributes a religious studies perspective. The bibliography references full translations of the selections. A thought-provoking discussion about the problems of translation is included.... Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels." --_Choice_. (shrink)

In his fine and thought-provoking book, Visual Culture in Contemporary China: Paradigms and Shifts, Xiaobing Tang presents a short history of visual culture in China from the mid-twentieth century to the present, a period that corresponds to the entire history of the People's Republic of China. Examining an array of artwork in various media and genres, from woodblock prints and oil paintings to films, Tang strives to excavate a vital tradition of socialist visual culture in China (...) of the past sixty years or so—a tradition that has been shaped by two major imperatives: "to create an inspirational visual environment in support of the social revolution" and "to... (shrink)

The American philosopher John Dewey is probably best known for his contributions to educational philosophy, though his writings on logic, metaphysics, epistemology and value theory are for the most part equally impressive. Before and after his death in 1952, he was lauded as “America’s philosopher” and a “public intellectual for the twentieth century.” During the early 1920s, to call Dewey an internationalist would be to state the obvious. He had travelled to Japan, Russia, Mexico, Turkey and China. Of all (...) these places, he stayed in China the longest—two years and two months (May 1919 to July 1921)—and wrote the most about his experiences there. Unfortunately, too much of the extent literature speaks to how Dewey influenced China. In this brief paper the author focuses on the question of how China changed Dewey. Before attempting this project it helps to explicate how Dewey conceived experience—to paint a picture of his so-called “metaphysics of experience”—in order to then appreciate how he conceived his own China experience. (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)

Writing, or calligraphy, in China is strongly influenced by ancient techniques of making art. Chinese characters have evolved from the patterns of bronze drawings, and China’s earliest hieroglyphs usually retain the traces of their origin in paintings. These paintings usually recorded daily life, and the related Chinese characters have evolved from these with general, simplified and abstract features. The composition that makes Chinese characters is a manifestation of ancient Chinese philosophy, of which Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism are the (...) three key strands. They have affected Chinese culture and aesthetics in all dynasties. Chinese philosophy emphasizes the integration of individuals in their surrounding environment. The art of ancient China consequently combines skills that relate to the artificial, or constructed, and to natural patterns. Chinese characters make a perfect example of this. The article/presentation will outline the research that I have so far undertaken on the relation between Chinese calligraphy and architectural space, between writing and constructing environments. It will also present some experimental design research that aims at developing from the above-mentioned basic research new architectural typologies that are contemporary, resonant and sensitive to the Chinese context. (shrink)

The lotus, celebrated for its cultural symbolism and aesthetic allure, has been a recurring muse for flower and bird painters in Chinese art history. This article explores lotus paintings during the Ming and Qing dynasties, pivotal periods of ideological liberation and societal complexities. Traditional lotus artworks across dynasties have woven a rich tapestry in Chinese painting. Focusing on the lotus, the article intricately combines symbolic meanings and historical contexts, unraveling the flower's intrinsic artistic essence. It sheds light on the (...) evolving aesthetic qualities within lotus depictions, using this exploration as a lens to understand cross-cultural exchanges and clashes between Chinese and Western influences. Emphasizing the inherent artistic will of lotus-themed painting, the research delves into the nuanced development and aesthetic significance of this genre. By elucidating the beauty expressed in the evolution of lotus images, the study provides valuable insights with contemporary relevance. It highlights the symbolic significance of the lotus in Ming and Qing China, incorporating concrete examples of renowned lotus paintings and artists. This comprehensive approach aims to enhance reader-friendly comprehension and explicitly articulates the contribution of these findings to current artistic practices. The research not only deepens our understanding of lotus culture but also serves as a reference for contemporary lotus-themed creative endeavors, connecting historical expressions with modern artistic sensibilities. (shrink)

As two different art categories, literature and painting use temporal words and spatial images respectively to convey information and narrative. In addition to the pursuit of visual decoration, the paintings in books and periodicals in the period of the Republic of China were widely and profoundly influenced by the literature of the same period from the aspects of the style of expression, the theme of content and the creative techniques, thus breaking through the limitations of their own media (...) and achieving narrative effects like literary. The reflection of literary thoughts and trends in theme, the translation of classical novels in content and the use of literary techniques such as metaphor, synaesthesia and “Bixing” in the expression techniques that further highlighted the functional value, aesthetic value, and historical value of the images. In the visual information age, only by maintaining the characteristics of their own media and absorbing the narrative advantages of other artistic media, can images break through the limitation of plane static space and achieve a narrative effect with more artistic appeal and ideological and cultural depth. (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)

The object of the study is the image of an emaciated horse in Chinese culture. It represents a real artistic phenomenon, serving as a reflection of the self-perception of authors who are faced with a sense of alienation and injustice, isolation from society, and the inability to get help. The subject is the image of thin horses in the painting by the Italian Catholic artist Giuseppe Castiglione, who arrived in China for missionary work. His stay in China (...) coincided with a period of strong rejection of Catholicism in the country. The article pays special attention to the use of the image of a skinny horse as a metaphor, a veiled way to convey the subjective perception of the situation at the Qing court. The emaciated animal is considered by the author both as a visual phenomenon enriching the variety of characters in the paintings, and as a reflection of philosophical reasoning about the relationship between man and society. Formal-stylistic and structural-semantic types of analysis became the leading research methods. With their help, the author studied the compositional structure, coloristic features and semantic aspects of the fragments of the painting analyzed in the article by Giuseppe Castiglione. The scientific novelty of the research is due to the small number of thematic publications in Russian art history. One can find scientific works on Chinese culture devoted either to the image of horses in general, or taking into account exclusively the work of Giuseppe Castiglione. Combining the analysis of the image of an exhausted horse as such and the analysis of the painting "A Hundred Horses", the author closed the gap in a highly specialized art criticism problem, arguing the theses put forward with biographical data about the artist and historical references. New information deepens knowledge about the cultural characteristics of the Chinese people and can serve as an aid for further research by art historians. The author comes to several conclusions. First, he discovers the specific philosophical significance of the image of an emaciated horse. Secondly, it notes its stability in various creative figures. Thirdly, he reveals the peculiarities of the fate of Giuseppe Castiglione using the example of "Hundreds of Horses". (shrink)

The content of Chinese folk paintings by nongminhua is based on morality and national philosophy, which can inspire and raise the morale of citizens. This type of incentive differs from agitation and advertising in the usual sense of these concepts. This is a form of complex artistic expression combining symbolic lyrics and philosophical reflections, which has in its arsenal methods of active stimulation aimed at gaining the trust of the audience and expanding the coverage of propaganda activities. The object of (...) this study is the Chinese folk paintings of nongminhua, and the subject is their educational and propaganda functions. The pictorial language of Chinese folk painting with a clearly defined theme, rich illustrative language, features of mass art, as well as its inherent tendency to widespread distribution distinguishes nongminhua from other art forms. All these differences inevitably become the reason for a completely different, unique force of social impact of folk paintings. The main conclusion of the study is that the simplicity of creating folk paintings, their inherent features of information dissemination and cultural functions have led to a wide range of their existence at different stages of China's social development. Brightness and visibility made the nongminhua understandable to the general population, determined their effectiveness in the implementation of educational and propaganda functions. (shrink)

On 24 July 2012, the Sansha People’s Government was established on an anthropogenic island in the South China Sea, more than 350 kilometers from the southernmost point of Hainan Province. Sansha is the PRC’s smallest city, occupying roughly ten square kilometers on Woody Island and housing a population of just over a thousand; at the same time, it is also the PRC’s largest city, symbolically laying claim to thousands of kilometers of space in the South China Sea. Alongside (...) the ambitious logistical and military projects to build Sansha into part of China, highlighting an official shift from temporal to territorial nationalism, a corresponding state aesthetic project has consolidated in citizens’ minds a distant island that most will never see. The resulting cultural products portray a new addition of territory as an eternal part of China, while a remote island is constructed as an integral yet also mystical part of the nation-state. Examining artistic portrayals of the island across mediums including film, poetry, and painting, this article critically analyzes newly emerging trends in state and popular nationalism in China today. (shrink)

This study examines the specifics of the theme of the anti-Japanese war in Chinese art at various stages from the 1930s to the beginning of the XXI century. The key works of graphic artists and painters are selected as the material, which mark the key points of the evolution of the topic under consideration. Images in Chinese art associated with the events of the anti-Japanese War or the "War of Resistance" have been created by artists for more than seven decades, (...) changing and transforming in accordance with political, ideological, socio-cultural and artistic-stylistic factors. This topic is extremely important for the people, since it was she who gave the art of the newly born New China in the XX century a historical dimension, determined the measure of responsibility of Chinese artists to society and partly the aesthetic paradigm of the evolution of the arts. Moreover, it has served and continues to serve as a source of inspiration for new generations of masters of historical painting, especially battle artists. As a result of the analysis and generalization, four stages are distinguished. The first one is connected with the work of wartime graphs, which recorded the most important moments of the confrontation between the two armies and peoples, determining the general realistic orientation in the development of the theme and its iconography. The middle of the century is the time of the establishment of images associated with the anti-Japanese war as the main line in Chinese painting, the appearance of multi-figure subject canvases, including in the battle genre. The last third of the XX century is defined as the period of transition from the glorification of events to the embodiment of the understanding of that war as a national tragedy, as well as the enrichment of romanticized realism with new artistic forms. At the beginning of the new century, artists tended to create large-scale canvases, saturating them with complex symbolic meanings and details. Such changes indicate the continuation of the evolution of the topic under study and its further transformations. (shrink)

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)

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)

At M. Bernard's I saw several magnificent paintings on porcelain by Monsieur Constantin. In two hundred years, Raphael's frescoes will be known only through Monsieur Constantin.Stendhal, Voyage en France, 1837If we compare the forms that the act of copying has assumed in various civilizations, we cannot fail to notice that a certain number of phenomena are specific to European culture since the Renaissance. Perhaps one of the most singular of these phenomena is the will to create and to possess imperishable (...) reproductions of works that have been singled out, at a given moment, as the brightest jewels of Western art. The history of the fortune of Graeco-Roman sculptures has been masterfully related by Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny in Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, even if it would no doubt be worthwhile to give further consideration to the critical fortune of materials used for reproduction, and particularly to the particular prestige attached to bronze—from the Mantuan works of Antico to the reconstitutions of Greek Urbilder in bronze, instead of the plaster used earlier, which were executed at the beginning of the twentieth century, such as the two Doryphoros that Georg Römer realized from various ancient marble copies of Polyclitus's athlete. But, in fact, it was not only in modern Europe that copies were made in bronze. The production of copies using this alloy was particularly prevalent in imperial China after the rediscovery, in the second half of the eleventh century of our era, of a collection of archaic bronzes from the Shang era. This is why I prefer to call attention to a practice that appears to me, in contrast, to be unique to the Western world: the copying of renowned paintings in materials that are supposed to defy time. (shrink)

In this strikingly original contribution to our understanding of Chinese philosophy,Françle;ois Julien, a French sinologist whose work has not yet appeared in English usesthe Chinese concept of shi - meaning disposition or circumstance, power or potential - as atouchstone to explore Chinese culture and to uncover the intricate and coherent structure underlyingChinese modes of thinking.A Hegelian prejudice still haunts studies of ancient Chinese civilization:Chinese thought, never able to evolve beyond a cosmological point of view, with an indifference toany notion of (...) telos, sought to interpret reality solely on the basis of itself. In thisgroundbreaking study, prejudices toward the simplicity and "naiveté" of Chinese thought, Hegelianand otherwise, are dismantled one by one to reveal the intricate and coherent structure underlyingChinese modes of thinking and representing reality.Jullien begins with a single Chinese term, shi,whose very ambivalence and disconcerting polysemy, on the one hand, and simple efficacy, on theother, defy the order of a concept. Yet shi insinuates itself into the ordering and conditioning ofreality in all its manifold and complex representations. Because shi neither gave rise to anycoherent, general analysis nor figured as one of the major concepts among Chinese thinkers, Jullienfollows its appearance from one field to another: from military strategy to politics; from theaesthetics of calligraphy and painting to the theory of literature; and from reflection on historyto "first philosophy."At the point where these various domains intersect, a fundamental intuitionassumed self-evident for centuries emerges, namely, that reality - every kind of reality - may beperceived as a particular deployment or arrangement of things to be relied upon and worked to one'sadvantage. Art or wisdom, as conceived by the Chinese, lies in strategically exploiting thepropensity that emanates from this particular configuration of reality. (shrink)

Dunhuang is the world's largest, longest-lasting, and most valuable cultural and artistic treasure of ancient murals and an important component of grotto art. The clothing and costumes of the Dunhuang murals reflect the process of Sinicization of Buddhism over the time. In order to save the costumes of these murals from deterioration and age-related factors, digital technology is used, which can not only save the precious cultural relics but also ensure their permanent and authentic preservation. This study takes the vestment (...) on the imperial mural of the Vimala Kirti Sutra of Cave No. 220 in the Mogao Grottoes of Dunhuang, China, as the research object. Firstly, it studied the detailed components, materials, colors, heraldic symbols, meanings, and aesthetic characteristics of mural vestments from the perspective of clothing history. Then, it restored the clothing patterns in the murals using digital technology, established the three-dimensional clothing model on the CLO 3D platform, and carried out the 3D digital restoration of the research object. In order to verify the accuracy of the restoration results, the analytic hierarchy process and the entropy method were comprehensively used to determine the subjective and objective weights of the indexes, and the comprehensive weights were corrected based on the idea of game theory. Finally, fuzzy comprehensive evaluation was used for the restoration results. According to the final calculation result of fuzzy comprehensive evaluation, the restoration result was considered “good” with an overall evaluation score of 80.35. One of the greatest challenges of this project revolved around recovering the dilapidated mural paintings using digital technology. The high precision of the digital restoration of the vestment showcases the three-dimensional dynamic appearance of the Tang Dynasty emperors. This not only facilitates the education and propagation of traditional costume culture but also offers a novel approach to the sustainable display of mural cultural heritage. (shrink)

This article mainly outlines and explores the art exhibitions held between China and the Soviet Union during the founding of the People's Republic of China. The author examines in detail such aspects of the topic as mutual exchanges of art exhibitions between China and the Soviet Union since the founding of the People's Republic of China. Particular attention is paid to the political background against which the evolution in Chinese art took place, as well as the (...) legacy of Soviet realist art in China in the political context and the interaction of art with politics and state-building. The author emphasizes the positive influence of art exhibitions held by the Soviet Union in China on Chinese art education and the creativity of artists. The main conclusions of this study are that the various exhibitions of Soviet art held in China provided an effective opportunity for Chinese artists to study Soviet realist oil paintings. The emergence of Soviet realism in China also served as an important reference point for the development of Chinese oil painting in the 1950s. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that the author not only analyzed the process of the acceptance and dissemination of Soviet realist art in China, but also examined the beginning and end of artistic exchange between China and the Soviet Union in conjunction with the country's social environment and the political leadership of its leaders. (shrink)

This book introduces traditional and modern aesthetics and arts, comparing the similarities and differences between traditional and modern Chinese aesthetics. It also explores the aesthetic implications of traditional Chinese paintings, and discusses the development of aesthetics throughout history, as well as the changes and improvements in Chinese aesthetics in the context of globalization.

The remarkable growth in interest in aesthetic gardens in the late Ming period has been recognized in Chinese garden culture studies. The materialist historical approach contributes to revealing the importance of gardens’ economic functions in the shift of garden culture, but is inadequate in explaining the successive burgeoning of small plain gardens in the 17th century. This article integrates the aesthetic and materialist perspectives and situates the cultural transition in the concrete social and cultural context in the late Ming period. (...) Beginning with describing a taste change and an expansion in the number of gardens, this article focuses on the small plain garden phenomenon by exploring the unique role that the arts (e.g., poetry and painting) played. A series of artistic criteria were established in the late Ming period. The application of these aesthetic rules to gardens enabled more people to own gardens. This is process that economic requirements for owning gardens were lowered, giving way to the aesthetic appreciation and exploration of literati individuals’ artistic talents. Gardens thus became more widely accessible and provided enhanced pleasure to the middle and lower class families. The conclusion is that the ‘major shift’ in garden culture was closely associated with the change of garden owners’ aesthetic tastes, in addition to the economic conditions in the Jiangnan area. In the increased popularity of gardens, the arts played a significant role. (shrink)

In this strikingly original contribution to our understanding of Chinese philosophy, Françle;ois Julien, a French sinologist whose work has not yet appeared in English uses the Chinese concept of shi - meaning disposition or circumstance, power or potential - as a touchstone to explore Chinese culture and to uncover the intricate and coherent structure underlying Chinese modes of thinking.A Hegelian prejudice still haunts studies of ancient Chinese civilization: Chinese thought, never able to evolve beyond a cosmological point of view, with (...) an indifference to any notion of telos, sought to interpret reality solely on the basis of itself. In this groundbreaking study, prejudices toward the simplicity and "naiveté" of Chinese thought, Hegelian and otherwise, are dismantled one by one to reveal the intricate and coherent structure underlying Chinese modes of thinking and representing reality.Jullien begins with a single Chinese term, shi, whose very ambivalence and disconcerting polysemy, on the one hand, and simple efficacy, on the other, defy the order of a concept. Yet shi insinuates itself into the ordering and conditioning of reality in all its manifold and complex representations. Because shi neither gave rise to any coherent, general analysis nor figured as one of the major concepts among Chinese thinkers, Jullien follows its appearance from one field to another: from military strategy to politics; from the aesthetics of calligraphy and painting to the theory of literature; and from reflection on history to "first philosophy."At the point where these various domains intersect, a fundamental intuition assumed self-evident for centuries emerges, namely, that reality - every kind of reality - may be perceived as a particular deployment or arrangement of things to be relied upon and worked to one's advantage. Art or wisdom, as conceived by the Chinese, lies in strategically exploiting the propensity that emanates from this particular configuration of reality. (shrink)

Compiled by a leading scholar of Chinese poetry, _Clouds Thick, Whereabouts Unknown_ is the first collection of Chan poems to be situated within Chan thought and practice. Combined with exquisite paintings by Charles Chu, the anthology compellingly captures the ideological and literary nuances of works that were composed, paradoxically, to "say more by saying less," and creates an unparalleled experience for readers of all backgrounds. _Clouds Thick, Whereabouts Unknown_ includes verse composed by monk-poets of the eighth to the seventeenth centuries. (...) Their style ranges from the direct vernacular to the evocative and imagistic. Egan's faithful and elegant translations of poems by Han Shan, Guanxiu, and Qiji, among many others, do justice to their perceptions and insights, and his detailed notes and analyses unravel centuries of Chan metaphor and allusion. In these gems, monk-poets join mainstream ideas on poetic function to religious reflection and proselytizing, carving out a distinct genre that came to influence generations of poets, critics, and writers. The simplicity of Chan poetry belies its complex ideology and sophisticated language, elements Egan vividly explicates in his religious and literary critique. His interpretive strategies enable a richer understanding of Mahayana Buddhism, Chan philosophy, and the principles of Chinese poetry. (shrink)

As China and the United States strive to be the primary global leader in AI, their visions are coming into conflict. This is frequently painted as a fundamental clash of civilisations, with evidence based primarily around each country’s current political system and present geopolitical tensions. However, such a narrow view claims to extrapolate into the future from an analysis of a momentary situation, ignoring a wealth of historical factors that influence each country’s prevailing philosophy of technology and thus their (...) overarching AI strategies. In this article, we build a philosophy-of-technology-grounded framework to analyse what differences in Chinese and American AI policies exist and, on a fundamental level, why they exist. We support this with Natural Language Processing methods to provide an evidentiary basis for our analysis of policy differences. By looking at documents from three different American presidential administrations––Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden––as well as both national and local policy documents (many available only in Chinese) from China, we provide a thorough comparative analysis of policy differences. This article fills a gap in US–China AI policy comparison and constructs a framework for understanding the origin and trajectory of policy differences. By investigating what factors are informing each country’s philosophy of technology and thus their overall approach to AI policy, we argue that while significant obstacles to cooperation remain, there is room for dialogue and mutual growth. (shrink)

The introduction of the essay shows the impossibility of considering both China and Europe as univocal cultural identities schematically opposed. Starting from this, the main goal of the article is to put into comparison the specific artistic experience of Chinese and European painting. The historical moment taken into account includes some examples from European painting between the late Middle Ages and the Nineteenth Century as well as some from Chinese painting between the Ming and Qing era. (...) From this comparison, the article aims to highlight some elements of discontinuity between European ontology of art and Chinese pictorial conception. Western portrait is considered as an expression of the individual character of its creator, as well as of the subject represented and of the collective character of the historical era in which it is conceived. On the contrary, Chinese landscape painting is considered as a manifestation of the “emptiness” of the author’s “non-self” and, at the same time, as an expression of the dynamic processes of nature exceeding both the limits of the subject and those of the historical context. While in the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque, both the works of art and the handwork details condense the epochal taste (kunstwollen) and the spirit of the time (Zeitgeist), in China the historical and artistic processes are part of the process of Dao and express the flow of the supra-historical energy of qi. (shrink)

Taking into account my personal path as a philosopher and as a painter, I try to sketch the perspective on aesthetics that was opened to me by a cross-cultural encounter. The European tradition, on one side, and the Sino-Japanese tradition, on the other side, are the two mirroring currents along which I moved in order to trace a sort of “deconstruction” and a “restructuring” of artistic and philosophical vision. In my painting, I aim for a confluence of different streams (...) of thought by thinking about European informal art and landscape ink-painting of China and Japan. This confluence continues to produce a fertile dialogue, enlivening the deep resources that constitute the core of a subjectivity in process. Aesthetics converts itself into ethics: an ethical move, beyond the opposition of visible and invisible as dull substances, beyond the opposition of immanence and transcendence, is one of the inner goals of this pathway between art and philosophy. (shrink)