The Multiple Semantics Of Cloud In Song Dynasty Painting

Cloud,as a kind of common natural landscape,because of its changeless form,can deliver abundant and good information.Therefore,cloud usually becomes an object that painters take care and describe.Meanwhile,it makes cloud become an important visual symbol in traditional Chinese painting..The image of cloud has irreplaceable position in the Chinese painting history.It shows a distinctive image of illusory and intangible.However,in the studies on traditional landscape painting in the past,their most contents are brushwork of mountains and trees.In addition,with relative deprivation of document literature and less representatives,their contents neglect the importance of cloud in traditional painting.The thesis regards cloud as the starting point of study,and discuss concretely its shape in the painting,expression,and its importance on the picture and prospect.Cloud appears in a variety of Song Dynasty painting: figure painting of Buddhism and Taoism;landscape painting that based on “realism”;painting that scholar-officials place on their friendship and pursuit image.The image of cloud runs through it with different shapes and expressions.In the figure painting of Buddhism and Taoism in Song Dynasty,cloud usually appears in order to foil the deity boundary of figures in the painting.The images of figures are similar to ordinary people,but people wander in the clouds,so as to show figures’ deity,and indicate that they are Buddhist gods.In Five Hundred Arhats Map,drew by Zhou Jichang,a painter in the Southern Song Dynasty,figures transmit gods by clouds.In addition,in Nine Songs Map,cloud enables pictures to lead to another celestial world.In the magnificent natural landscape,cloud obviously shows the height and remoteness of natural mountains and rivers space,and expresses author’s advanced spiritual boundary with mountains.However,in the Song Dynasty painting with literati temperament,the appearance of clouds usually metaphors a kind of “poetic dwelling”,so as to express “spirit” and individual spirit.From here,we can see that cloud shoeswith different ways and skills in traditional Chinese painting,which makes painting space change from the mundane to the celestial world,from reality to poetry.From the study situation at home and abroad,the studies on the image of cloud are mostly from the perspective of techniques,but it makes no sense that artistic creation just discusses skills,not intention.The attention of the thesis is the development and transition of clouds,which plays a special role in deliver of painters’ feeling.Concrete analysis on skills and significance of cloud in the Song Dynasty paintings make us explicit the special position of cloud in Song Dynasty paintings,and hope that the study on traditional Chinese paintings can increase many new contents and benefits.