Comparison Studies On Chinese And Western Concepts Of Body Aesthetics And Its Representations

This dissertation firstly reviews the meaning of physical aesthetics, which refers to the study of the beauty of human body and that of its related inner spirit and their aesthetic rules. Originated from the value judgment of human body' s teleology and regularity, the concept of physical beauty has evolved from the emphasis of the beauty of procreation and life force at the primitive time to the appreciation of the form of a well-developed body based on sexual attraction at civilized society, and at last to the focus of the harmony and conformity of spiritual virtue and physical beauty. Although the concept of physical beauty varies as nation, country, region, times, class or individual chanciness differs, there does exist common ground for it among people across the world: viewing good health and vital life force as beauty, considering to the greatest extent the body's teleology and regularity as beauty, and emphasizing the beauty of spirit, temperament and grace.The geographical range of Chinese body aesthetics discussed in this dissertation refers to Cathayan districts in ancient China. "The West" includes ancient Greece, Rome, Europe in Middle Ages, modern Europe, countries in North America. Hellenic art mainly aims to resurrect body appropriately. In the florescence of Hellenic civilization, the art of appreciating body went to its summit. Roman art generally follows Grecian tradition, competes to imitate Grecian art in the aspects of sculpture, drawing's subject matter, forms and so on. Greco-Roman ideas of physical beauty have jointly laid its solid foundation for modern European theories. Though Greco-Roman philosophy and art were distorted in Middle Ages, relevant cultural legacies have greatly been organized and explored. Renaissant art and culture means the renaissance of ancient culture, that is, Grecian and Roman culture. Great thinkers and artists in modern Europe also make their efforts to absorb the soul from Greco-Roman culture. So we can see that Grecian art is the origin of western art, which is exerting a significant influence on Western body aesthetics in the perspectives of body aesthetics, interests and representation.Taking it as the premise, aiming at the gap in comparison studies of Chinese and Western body aesthetics in aesthetic circle, this dissertation tries to analyze the profound reason, from a multi-disciplinary perspective, for the different attitudes towards physical beauty in China and ancient Greek: "covering" in the former and "exposing" in the latter, and prove respectively the unique traditional aesthetic tastes towards the physical beauty in china and ancient Greek through the case study of Chinese and western literature and art, and discover the connection of their aesthetic ideas of physical beauty and their artistic forms with their social being after pointing out the samenesses anddifferences of forms of physical beauty in Chinese and western literature and art.Therefore, the dissertation aims to demonstrate different behaviors of Chinese and Greeks by studying different geographical conditions in ancient China and ancient Greece. The climate in China (cold in winter and hot in summer) and the way of agricultural laboring make it necessary for people to wear clothes, while the warmer climate in Greece makes people accustomed to being naked. Agricultural culture and oceanic culture leads to Chinese honoring Wen (scholarship) the embodiment of which is rituals that requires body must be covered by clothes and Greek honoring Wu (warrior) which leads to Greek extensive physical training and athletic competition, and the naked training in turn leads to Greek aesthetic appreciation of uncovered physical body. Chinese strict ethic restriction and Greek loose ethic restriction also account for their different attitude towards physical beauty. In china Confucian ethic holds "Ren"(Benevolence) as its core and "Li" (propriety norms) as its demonstration, the latter pervades in Chinese daily life and social intercourse, and directly leads to Chinese strong sense of shyness in aesthetic appreciation of physical body. In Greek, the specific climate, the complicated and divisive geographical environment, overseas trade and immigration all contribute to the broken kinship and clan relation and in turn to the formation of the nation's loose and independent ethic on which the aesthetic concept of "exposing"body was built.Then this dissertation discusses two divergent body aesthetic interests and figures out that the concepts of "covering" and "exposing" are two main clues throughout the aesthetic development in China and Western countries. In ancient china, owing to the aesthetic concept of "covering", women's sexy body was not directly represented. Instead, attention was diverted to women's face, hands and feet, clothes, gesture and so on, and focus was given to the women's inner temperament and elegance, men's moral quality was viewed as the main standard for physical beauty, besides the demonstration of masculinity, men's feminity was also appreciated. Ancient Greek thought the naked body itself was a beauty, and they valued the beauty of being healthy and sexy. To be concrete, men appreciated and possessed women's sexy body directly, and they put women into two categories: virtuous housewife and prostitute, the requirement of the former was self-control, the latter sexy body. However the artistic creation of women's body had multiple aesthetic tastes. And that of men's was energetic and forceful.Next, the doctoral focuses on perceiving similarities and differences of designing features and artistic conceptions in Chinese and Western artistic forms by comparative study on common features or pursuits of body's representations in Chinese and Western literature and art. The analysis will be carried out from the following five aspects, namely, realism, idealization, grotesquery, symbolism and metaphor. Then from the perspective of aesthetics, the dissertation will respectively elaboratethat numerous rich forms of Chinese art are always restricted by original thoughts so it presents profound features of imagism, that the tendency of realism and the approach of idealization in Western art, which are completely different from those in Chinese art, are the results of scientific advancement after the divorcement from original thoughts and that in Western art and literature, different forms of grotesquery and symbolism on different historical stages not only manifest the vivid features of the age appearing in a nation but also exhibit their differences from those in Chinese art and literature, and each illustrates its own distinct national characteristics.Finally, it is pointed out that the concept and the representations of body aesthetics in China and Western nations are not only characterized as having its national uniqueness but also similarities, which shows a complicated feature of differences in similarities and similarities in differences. This kind of national uniqueness exactly illustrates that, we cannot impose any nation's body aesthetics on other nations. Looking forward to the future, we should consider that with the growth of globalization, people's concept about body aesthetics and interests in different nations, countries and regions is changing and will change more towards a common and confluent trend by maintaining a nation's tradition and characteristics.