City,Architecture And Sculpture In Mountainous Terrain:Aesthetic Study On Space Of Human Settlements

The space art for human settlements is a basic component of urban and ruralplanning and architecture. However, in the process of accelerated urbanization overthe past30years, problems such as the separation of forms and spirits, vulgar taste andvalue misplacement arose in the development of space art for human settlements.The space art for human settlements has proved to be an important topic in China’surbanization and spiritual civilization. This study is built on the sciences of humansettlements by applying the interdisciplinary knowledge of urban and rural planning,architecture and fine arts, employing the research approaches of logical deduction inphilosophy, historical literature research and art practice in sculptures, and integratingtheory with practice. It also traces the aesthetic and cultural evolution of space art forhuman settlements in mountainous terrain. Based on all of these, this thesis attemptsto come up with the thinking logic, formation mechanism and constructive method ofspace art for human settlements from an aesthetic perspective.Human aestheticism has proved to be the result of natural selection and dynamicaccumulation, and the combination of innate material carrier, priori inner structure andacquired life experience. Firstly, investigating previous philosophical disputesbetween empiricism and apriorism, this thesis has come up with the view ofequivalence that a priori is experience, i.e. the internalization, materialization andideation of experience, as well as the author’s understanding of the law that thematerial and the mental are incorporated in energy and its operating rule, and thusestablished the essential correlation between the mental and material, the interior andexterior, and the metaphysical and physical. Through an interior observation andhierarchical analysis on the unity of Heaven, Earth and Man, this thesis has deducedthe mode of existence of the unity of “truth, goodness and comprehension”(i.e.generalized appreciation of beauty) based on the traditional consensus of “Truth,Goodness and Beauty”, and further extended to corresponding thinking andconstructive method of space art for human settlements featuring the unity of meaning,appearance and form. Thus it has built up basic rules and logical approaches ofaestheticism in the space art for human settlements.Secondly, through analysis on the interpenetration and interactive evolutionbetween beauty and the appreciation of beauty, this thesis reveals how the unity of Heaven, Earth and Man is presented, and how, during the presentation process, it hasdeveloped the formation mechanism of human sign behavior and space art symbols.Emphasizing the perceptual appearance, this thesis maintains that the dynamicconstruction, adjustment and even deconstruction of appearance are the key to theartistic experience and creation of expressing meaning in forms while embodying bothforms and spirits simultaneously. It further indicates that the harmony and unity ofthe correlation of appearance between form and conditions and its number, picture andcolor is the inherent mechanism for further correspondence between the empirical factsand logic concepts of space art for human settlements. Thus it has built up thecoupling mechanism of forms and meaning in the space art for human settlements.Lastly, by utilizing practice in the space art for human settlements in mountainousterrain, this thesis proposes the construction logic of three types and six combinationsin the space art for human settlements, i.e. extracting appearance from the nature andexpressing meaning in forms, following intuition and combining meaning andappearance, and abstracting order and making presumptions from axiom. On thisbasis, it proposes “conception-visualization-composition” as the constructive methodfor creating urban sculptures in mountainous terrain.As a practical land art, the space art for human settlements in mountainous terrainnot only represents the appearance of human settlements, but also requirescomprehension of the essential truth behind, so as to achieve poetic existence. Inpresenting his academic reflections, the author of this paper has been illuminated byprevious studies and conclusions from long-term practice, and his own research,practice and active explorations of the contradictions in the development of modernspace art for human settlements. It is hoped that this thesis would shed some light onthe development of space art for human settlements and China’s urbanization.