on painting

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Paintings

Throughout its long history, traditional Chinese painting has carried its own particular style. As early as two thousand years ago, there were outstanding painters in China who left behind excellent works for later generations. In fact, Chinese painting is the longest uninterrupted painting tradition in the world providing elements of continuity for 20th century Chinese art despite China's chaotic recent past.

Together with poetry and calligraphy, the art of painting has always been a practice of intellectuals. The artist aims at capturing the essence of an object and at reflecting his imagination. The first canon of Chinese painting describes its rhythmic vitality, which refers to the realm of imagination described by the successful union of matter and spirit or emotion and scenery.

Form is defined by line, the development of which has been closely linked to that of calligraphy. Artists have long been engaged in the study of the nature of beauty in lines. Composition is distinctive and has well-developed rules of perspective, rules that are very different from the Western idea of fixed point perspective. Chinese painters originated the idea of shifting perspective, so that when you look at a Chinese landscape painting, it seems as though you are looking down, out, and up simultaneously.

Poetry, calligraphy, painting, and seals complement one another in Chinese painting. Calligraphy stresses the arrangement of brush strokes and structure, and painting emphasizes composition and density. An artist will often combine techniques of calligraphy and painting to create a style of his own. Seals originally carried the artist's signature, but as carving techniques developed, they became an integral component of the paintings. The composition and position of the seal on a painting is an art in itself.

Ultimately, the test of a good painting is time. By living with a Chinese painting, one cannot fail to recognize "chi" or life spirit, which gives a painting a life of its own, and to understand the symbolic value of the painting. A painting of bamboo is not about the plant, but about strength and purity of character. Chinese painting engages the mind and the spirit, as well as the eye, because that is its primary purpose. The artist, inspired by the artistic line that has been traced down through the centuries, makes it the essence of his art. The appreciation of Chinese painting is another way of looking at beauty; its pleasures are many, and its rewards profound and far-reaching.