Painting was no longer about the description of the visible world it became a means of conveying the inner landscape of the artist’s heart and mind.ĭuring the Ming dynasty, when native Chinese rule was restored, court artists produced conservative images that revived the Song metaphor for the state as a well-ordered imperial garden, while literati painters pursued self-expressive goals through the stylistic language of Yuan scholar-artists. By evoking select antique styles, they could also identify themselves with the values associated with the old masters. Going beyond representation, scholar-artists imbued their paintings with personal feelings. The Yuan dynasty also witnessed the burgeoning of a second kind of cultivated landscape, the “mind landscape,” which embodied both learned references to the styles of earlier masters and, through calligraphic brushwork, the inner spirit of the artist. Because a man’s studio or garden could be viewed as an extension of himself, paintings of such places often served to express the values of their owner. These gatherings were frequently commemorated in paintings that, rather than presenting a realistic depiction of an actual place, conveyed the shared cultural ideals of a reclusive world through a symbolic shorthand in which a villa might be represented by a humble thatched hut. Under the Mongol Yuan dynasty, when many educated Chinese were barred from government service, the model of the Song literati retreat evolved into a full-blown alternative culture as this disenfranchised elite transformed their estates into sites for literary gatherings and other cultural pursuits. The monochrome images of old trees, bamboo, rocks, and retirement retreats created by these scholar-artists became emblems of their character and spirit. These men extolled the virtues of self-cultivation-often in response to political setbacks or career disappointments-and asserted their identity as literati through poetry, calligraphy, and a new style of painting that employed calligraphic brushwork for self-expressive ends. At the same time, images of the private retreat proliferated among a new class of scholar-officials. Faced with the failure of the human order, learned men sought permanence within the natural world, retreating into the mountains to find a sanctuary from the chaos of dynastic collapse.ĭuring the early Song dynasty, visions of the natural hierarchy became metaphors for the well-regulated state. As the Tang dynasty disintegrated, the concept of withdrawal into the natural world became a major thematic focus of poets and painters. Such images might also convey specific social, philosophical, or political convictions. By the late Tang dynasty, landscape painting had evolved into an independent genre that embodied the universal longing of cultivated men to escape their quotidian world to commune with nature.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |