From The Concept Of Landscape To The Landscape Design

This paper studies landscape painting as an important case of traditional Chinese culture. Not merely from the artistic perspective, but also from the standpoint of cultural studies, this paper probes into the internal correlation between landscape and the national character of the Chinese people, thus revealing the significance of landscape painting in Chinese culture.Introduction mainly stresses the concept of art anthropology and the method of cultural comparison. On the basis of literature review of Chinese and international landscape painting, this paper makes a tentative reflection and criticism upon the fate of landscape painting in the 20^th century which represented the traditional Chinese culture. Hopefully, this paper may dig up the genuine indigenous and national spiritual resources and aesthetic values contained in the landscape painting art by using a panoramic cultural view, and use them as the foundation of contemporary Chinese national cultural construction.The body of this paper contains two parts, five chapters in all.The first part deals with the cultural understanding of landscape idea. It mainly explores the cultural origin of cultural phylogeny and the historical and cultural situation of the gradual independence of landscape painting. Time period of this part ranges from Jin dynasty to Song Dynasty, including the formative period of landscape painting of Tang Dynasty and Five Dynasty. Landscape idea is an important prerequisite for the shaping of landscape painting. During the process of Chinese people's contact with nature, the infinitely colorful nature was crystallized into the bourn of "landscape". The Chinese people wove myth,cult,symbolism and metaphor, etc. into their own cultural network, and also established an unique emotional form and aesthetic relation with landscape. Landscape was transformed from natural existence to artistic image, from physical being to spiritual representation. This process can be divided into three phases from factual and logical perspective, that is, the first three chapters. The first chapter is mainly about the landscape idea of ancient China. Based on the archeology, mythology , cultural anthropology and the landscape-visiting activities of ancient Chinese people in the historical documents, this chapter describes the formation of landscape idea of ancient Chinese people and the landscape painting as a unique expression of philosophy of nature and outlook oncosmos. The second chapter is mainly about the prevalence of landscape aesthetics of Jin and Song Dynasties. It deals with the creative development of landscape idea by the people of Jin and Song Dynasties, thus constructing an aesthetic tradition using nature as a hard core of Chinese culture. The third chapter is about the manifestation of early landscape art. On the one hand, it reveals that landscape poems and landscape paintings share the same connotation by focusing on landscape painting, on the other hand, it tries to collect various archaeological and painting materials and tries to illustrate the landscape samples of early landscape paintings and re-produce the evolutionary process including the appearance, development, advancement of the landscape paintings to remedy the early landscape painting art's negligence of material evidence.The second part of this paper deals with the cultural explanation of landscape schema. The cases of this part mainly range from Five Dynasties, Song Dynasties to Qing Dynasty. With landscape painting becoming the leading one among three biggest painting categories, generations of painters had accumulated a lot of 'models of painting" for landscape painting creation, and summarized more through and elaborate painting techniques of landscapes. Based on the essential visual experience and painting practice, the "models of landscape painting" were upgraded into landscape schema and were also formulized later. The fourth chapter mainly analyzes the implication and origin landscape schema, and the cultural roots of eventual formulization of landscape schema. The fifth chapter is about the landscape schema and cultural apperception. From the perspective of different cultures shaping different ways of cultural apperception, it further analyzes that different nations, different groups foster different visual representation system in their own cultural traditions and cultural apperception deeply regulates a man's feeling about himself and the understanding of the world. Without specific cultural situation, any visual description would not be fully understandable and explainable. The artistic features of landscape paintings are the concomitants of the unique way of cultural apperception.The last part summarizes the dissertation. The value orientation of the Chinese culture in the 20^th century was "anti-tradition". The Chinese culture experienced a century-long westernization and modernization. Classical landscape painting has become a passing tradition in contemporary china, what's worse, the life style, emotional attitude, values and aesthetic experience of the ancient Chinese people contained in the landscape paintings has also disappeared. The contemporary Chinesepeople has already had no such capacity and necessity to repeat the landscape paintings of the ancient people, but the mission to re-construct the confidence of Chinese culture urges contemporary Chinese people to face the ideals and values contained in the landscapes paintings anew, and by use them to construct a human-nature relation with indigenous significance, so that we can maintain the fine traditions of the Chinese classic culture among the cultural diversity of the world and resume the original,profound and poetic characteristics of the Chinese culture, thus China will have a bright cultural personality and identity attestation among the family of nations.