A Poetical World

With the long history, tremendous achievements and sophisticated art theory, Chinese traditional landscape painting had acquired a distinctive and important place in the art world. Of course, not only in China, but also in the foreign countries, there are lots of scholars studying it in painting skills and theory throughout the history including aesthetic study, and which had become the main branch of aesthetics in China. From the perspective—an aesthetic ideal study of Chinese landscape painting, we may reach the meaning and value of it thoroughly which is significant to the study of art and aesthetics and may answer some theoretical questions. Furthermore, this kind of study possesses a great significance to the human existence because the landscape painting is the expression of the relationship among human, art and natural world. In the eyes of beholders, Chinese landscape painting is a presentation of a idealized and poetical world, and the painters believe that the art is a way of construction which expresses their existential ideal and the art ideal altogether by the brush in their hands. Artistic use the lines, the minimum painting language, to weave the world which also is the linkage of artists, works and the minds of beholders; the darkness and white, the main characteristics of Chinese painting, rooted in Chinese ancient philosophy, with their distinctive artistic value, show the essence of the world and the being. The composition of Chinese landscape painting also has the close relation with the ideal of artists, which is mainly embodied in the elements—distance(Yuan), into which Freedom, Feeling are blended as an infinite space and endless time. The elaboration of the composition by artists is the hard work of construction an ideal world for the physical body and spirit, and different artistic impressions in spirit and version of the landscape painting is the different conditions of human minds meeting the natural world. The idealized way of human existence is living together with the natural world, so the landscape painters hold that idealized life is traveling, experience the natural land during his whole life in order to acquiring a real emancipation, escaping from the worldly being and living in a existential world where we may see the essence directly and possess the metaphysical satisfaction. All these purposes embodied in the creates who appear in the landscape painting as a symbol of what the artists'dream, which scarcely being understood by contemporary people. In the research of art and existence ideal in Chinese landscape painting, profoundly studying the history of Chinese landscape painting, the artistic theory and the detail of works both in macro and micro ways, we try to grasp the spirit meaning of Chinese landscape painting and understand the poetic seeking in the producing and appreciating.