pp ch27 china
TRANSCRIPT
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Chapter 27: China and The Romantic View of
Nature
Humanities 103Beth CampSpring 2005
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Getting Started
How would you describe Chinese landscape painting?
What are the differences between European and Chinese “nature” painting?
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A Word about TaoismPhilosophy and religion
of China since c. 3 Century BCE --essentially to follow the way to achieve freedom from desire and life of simplicity
Later search for immortality, study of alchemy
By 5th Century integrated many aspects of Buddhism
Talking about Taoism is not talking about Taoism
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Chinese Landscape painters
Ni Tsan 1301-1374 Tai Chin 1388-1462 Chen Rong (active ca. 1235-1262)Shen Zhou 1427-1509
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Chen Rong (active ca. 1235-1262)
Nine Dragons, 1244
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Chen Rong, Detail of Nine Dragons, 1244
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Excerpt from “Nine Dragons”“. . . The greatness that emerged
from the tip of my brush cannot be found elsewhere in the world. At a distance, one feels as if the clouds and the waves were flying and moving. Viewed closely, one suspects that only a god could have painted these dragons.”
Source: Tales from the Land of Dragons
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Ni Tsan 1301-1374Peaceful Forest after RainThe Fishing Village after Autumn Rain
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Tai Chin 1388-1462
Returning Home Late from a Spring Outing
Online exhibit National Palace Museum, Taiwan
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Shen Zhou 1427-1509
Poet on a Mountain Top, c. 1500
Online lecture on Chinese Painting
White clouds like a belt encircle the mountain’s waistA stone ledge flying in space and the far thin roadI lean on my bramble staff and gazing into spaceMake the note of my flute an answer to the sounding torrent
Trans. Michael Sullivan, The Three Perfections: Chinese Painting, Poetry, and Calligraphy
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Constable
Constable: Wivenhoe Park (1816)
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Corot
Corot: Morning, Dance of Nymphs
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Bierstadt
American Romanticism: Bierstadt, “Looking Up the Yosemite Valley”
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Key elements of Romanticism?
Religious attachment to natureEmphasize individual experienceSubjective rather than objectiveHuman moods = Nature’s moodsPower of nature = inspiration + moral truth + redemption
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What’s Next?How would you describe Chinese landscape painting?
Read more about DaoismCheckout: 3,000 Years of Chinese Painting in the LBCC Library
What are the differences between European and Chinese “nature” painting?
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Do Chinese landscape paintings show Romanticism (1800-1850)?
Not a single style, technique or attitudeSubjective and imaginativeEmotionally intense, mystical Rebels against “classic”and “neoclassic”Emphasizes nature’s wild, mysterious, exotic, melancholic, melodramatic aspects