Comment on “Aesthetic conceptions and cultural symbols in traditional Chinese painting” (original) (raw)
Aesthetic conceptions and cultural symbols in traditional Chinese painting
2024
The aesthetic conception in traditional Chinese painting is an essential concept in ancient Chinese aesthetic thought and serves as the supreme aesthetic criterion pursued in classic painting creation. Artists use unique works to showcase the aesthetic conception in traditional Chinese painting, thereby highlighting the distinctive features of Chinese painting. This article conducts a genealogical analysis of artistic conception in traditional Chinese painting. It combines it with specific cultural symbols for interpretation to unveil the philosophical ideas and cultural concepts concentrated in traditional Chinese painting.
Chinese Aesthetics in the Contemporary World
Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 2020
Looking back at the reason why Western scholars in modern times demanded the birth of philosophical aesthetics, we can assess what role "Chinese aesthetics" should play in today's academic environment. As well known, by the time Alexander Baumgarten (1714-1762) coined the new term "aesthetics" in his master's thesis (1735), the field of aesthetics, which had not been given a name yet, was already flourishing in European academia and life. 1 Reflecting the growing interest in artistic experience and sense perception of people at that time, Baumgarten endorsed human experience as an important source of knowledge. Ironically, however, he put this field in a secondary position by defining it as "the logic of the inferior faculty of cognition" and "the art of the analogue of reason." 2 Aesthetics arrived much later in China as part of the modern educational curriculum, but soon received an enthusiastic welcome. Contrary to the European intellectuals, who were reluctant to regard aesthetics as an essential discipline, Chinese intellectuals assumed aesthetics as a core academic framework for explaining Chinese intellectual history. Therefore, the so-called "culture fever (wenhua re 文化熱)" of the late 1980s China, which was a large-scale debate about the criticism and succession of Chinese tradition, can also be referred to "aesthetics fever (meixue re 美學熱)" by nature. On the one hand, this fever was auspicious in that the Chinese have noticed a modern discipline that takes emotion and experience seriously. On the other hand, the huge writings resulting from the fever were mainly consumed in China and hardly caused any chemistry with Western aesthetics. Three decades later, I believe that we are now able to soberly reevaluate the topics that have been discussed in the field of Chinese aesthetics thus far. The holistic nature of Chinese aesthetics, which
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.
Different Approaches to Chinese Aesthetics
Asian Studies, 2020
The article introduces Fang Dongmei’s and Xu Fuguan’s ideas about aesthetics and examines their different methodological approaches. Fang Dongmei and Xu Fuguan are both representatives of the second generation of Modern Taiwanese Confucianism. The fundamental goal of this significant movement is to re-evaluate and re-examine the profound contents of Chinese thought in contemporary socio-political conditions through a dialogue with Western philosophy. The representatives of Modern Confucianism of the 20th century hoped that the encounter with the Western intellectual tradition would serve as a platform for modernization of Chinese culture on the one hand, and as a way to achieve the recognition of the West for the profound value of the Chinese intellectual tradition on the other. Fang Dongmei was one of the first representatives of this movement who was trained in Western and Chinese philosophy, and hence built his own philosophical theory on the encounter of both, while Xu Fuguan wa...
Contemporary Philosophical Aesthetics in China: The Relation between Subject and Object
Philosophy Compass, 2012
This article presents a historical account and philosophical analysis of the development of philosophical aesthetics in China in its Marxist regime, focusing on the relation between subject and object. It enters into the picture of the search for new philosophical aesthetics in Marxist China and engages the related debates and reforms. The representing four schools of aesthetics in the early decades of the new China are introduced, which were led by Gao Ertai, Cai Yi, Zhu Guangqin and Li Zehou. Each of them presents a different relationship between the subject and the object in the aesthetics process and initiates debates and controversies among themselves. In the 1990s aestheticians of the younger generation suggested a modern aesthetics system in which a new aesthetics notion was reconstructed. The article analyzes the nature and the structure of this notion ''ganxing'', and demonstrated the struggles in its search for a balance and merge integration among traditional Chinese aesthetics, Contemporary Western philosophies and Marxist aesthetics. Finally, this article also points out the Deweyan influences on the notion which is popular in PRC, and demonstrates that Chinese aesthetics in the contemporary scene has more concerns to add on, which is the application of its new aesthetical thoughts to the rapidly developing art scenes and social changes in contemporary China.
Abstract Painting: The Formation of New Aesthetics in Post-Mao China
Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, 2021
This paper explores the twisting path toward understanding and accepting abstract painting in the late 1970s and 1980s and contextualizes it within China’s domestic socio-political changes and its diplomatic relations with the West. Reformist artists constructed an aesthetic affinity between modern Western abstraction and traditional indigenous art forms. Although this cross-historical connection resulted in some misunderstandings of abstract art, it motivated artists to express personal feelings through pure forms without being burdened by the need to convey political messages. In return, art audiences were no longer passive recipients of propaganda; they became active explorers of new art experiences. This paper also calls attention to the indispensable role of art institutions in promoting abstract art. The art market and mass communication media were not fully developed, so official art museums, art academies, and art journals and magazines were essential channels through which artists learned about abstract painting. Despite some conflicts between individual artists and institutions, their dialogues, negotiations, and cooperations reflected the underlying energies in society and mediated the cultural transformation in the early years of the reform and opening-up period.
Chinese Painting Between Modernity and Tradition: Reflections on an Exhibition and a Conference
It has been immensely stimulating for me to see the Tenth National Exhibition of Chinese Painting and to hear the papers presented at this conference. I was invited as an outside observer, and an outsider I am, in two senses. First, I am not a scholar of Chinese painting; while I have seen collections and exhibition of Chinese art in American and European museums, I have never studied it formally. Secondly, I am a Westerner by birth, culture, and scholarly specialty; my teaching and research are dedicated to the modern and contemporary art of the West with particular emphasis on the art, art theory, and art criticism of Germany. I am painfully aware of my own limitations in this context-most if not all of the Chinese participants in this conference are more familiar with my tradition than I am with theirs. Nevertheless, what I have seen and heard here has engaged me profoundly and has pushed my thinking onto untrodden paths, provoking me to reflect in fresh ways on the relationship between tradition, modernity, and the medium of painting in my own culture. I offer some of those reflections here. I shall present my brief remarks in three parts: The first relates to the issue of tradition and modernity in contemporary art with reference to the Tenth National Exhibition of Chinese Painting. The second concerns the relation between theory and arthistorical method on one side, and artistic practice on the other. The third part addresses the place of issues of medium and technique in the methodology of Western Art History.