Toward a Structural Analysis of Chinese Landscape Painting

Western Approaches to Chinese Landscape Painting

“…Wen Fong approaches, categorizes, and evaluates Chinese landscape painting with Western art historical templates and labels. She raises the following question: “How can we formulate an historical development of Chinese painting which, in short, combines the idea of periodic change in pictorial structure (or form-relationships) in painting, with the knowledge of continuous individual manners characterized by individual motifs (including form elements and techniques) and expressive qualities?” (Fong, 1969: 392).…”

“…33 years after the publication of the Essay , in 1969, an article by Wen Fong is published in Art Journal . The very first sentence of the article is: “A critical and historical study of Chinese landscape painting has long suffered from the lack of an acceptable method for dating painting by style” (Fong, 1969: 388).…”

“…As quoted above, the author’s main aim throughout the article is to classify “the modern notion of period style” for Chinese landscape painting, as well as identify and describe the individual manner. With the major term “style” in mind, Wen Fong is trying to apply Western frameworks and notions of art: “A new style is a new idea… The historian is interested in the inceptions of styles, not in their perpetuations” (Fong, 1969: 391, quoting from Max Loehr).…”

Spatial visual music - the combination of visual music and physical space

“…Landscape painting, which in Chinese is called shan-shui-hua (literally as "the painting of mountains and waters"), is an important branch of traditional Chinese painting. On the utilization of space, the landscape painting is relatively (Fong, 1969(Fong, , 1971 Figure 25 -Overlapped triangular mountain motifs suggest recession…”

“…1068-1085) as the "Three Distances" 40 : "high-distance" (gao-yuan), "flatdistance" (ping-yuan) and "deep-distance" (sheng-yuan) (Fong, 1969). To be specific, according to the text in Linquan-Gaozhi , when looking at 39 Guo Xi (c. 1020 -c. 1090) was a Chinese landscape painter, art theorist and literate who lived during the Northern Song dynasty and served as a court painter under Emperor Shen-zong (reigned 1068-1085).…”