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Gardens: The Ideal Home Of Mankind

Posted on:2002-03-30Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:W Z ZhouFull Text:PDF
GTID:1115360032956482Subject:Fine Arts
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Focus on the analysis of the garden styles, plantscape and stonescape, as well as waterscape and garden architecture, the author have drawn a parallel between the classical garden arts in China and that in the West mainly by historical and parallel comparative methods.It is indicated that, although they have the similar historical origins, the classic gardens in China and those in the West are very different in the ideas, styles and landscapes of the gardens due to the differences in natural conditions, social environments, cultural backgrounds, religious factors and aesthetic ideals. The former has been seeking natural beauty and appears to be the natural landscape garden style in symbolism by the influences of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, especially by Zen and the Confucian school of idealist philosophy of the Song and Ming Dynasties, and the latter was in pursuit of artificial or architectural beauty and becomes the human-centered gardens. As the representatives of the gardens in the West, the gardens of Italy, France and England have the same prototype of geometric and formal garden styles in the classic world. However, there are diffettnt styles dominating Western European countries in the different periods, they were: the renaissance and baroque gardens in l6-l7~?c. Italy, the classical ~great styles?in 17Ih c. France, and the English landscape gardens in 18 century. They are the fruits of the accumulation of their own cultural and social factors.The layouts and principal elements of gardens represent the ideas of design and the garden styles. The Chinese classic gardens, characterized by freedom, change and winding, usually use rockeries, the plants with traditional Chinese cultural meanings and the 損oetic imagery of garden?to seek 搉ature of nature? In the West, the garden designers express 憃rder and control?by the art of topiary, geometric parterre, maze, bosco, fountains and garden sculptures, etc. In England, the landscape garden is famous for its groves, grassland and realistically natural landscapes. All of these are riches of the design of modern landscaping.Although Chinese and Western classical gardens developed in a diametrically opposite way before 18敀 century, they have many similarities, such as similarity in their origins and development, social identity and material identity, on the basis of elemenfarsedanken, i.e., the identity of mankind. The underlying aspects of garden arts reveal that every activity of garden making, no matter what styles, means we mankind want to built an ideal home, to be in search of the paradise.
Keywords/Search Tags:Chinese and Western classical garden arts, comparative study, garden styles, principal elements of gardening, ideas of garden design, essence of garden making.
PDF Full Text Request
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