Reflection On The Neutralization Beauty, Freehand Brushwork Drawing And Point-line-surface Art Of Traditional Chinese Painting

As a unique study field, esthetics depends on people's esthetic activity and art practice. In turn, the esthetic activity and art practice would instruct the development of people's esthetic consciousness as well as art practice. Traditional Chinese painting esthetics takes philosophy as its foundation. It researches into the creation and esthetic rules of the painting and also the educational functions that the paintings may embrace. This article inquires about the traditional Chinese painting from three angles: the neutralization beauty, the Xieyi(freehand brushwork drawing art) and the composition skills about point, line and surface drawing. The neutralization beauty in Chinese traditional painting was an esthetic principle sought not only in the field of Chinese ancient philosophy but also by other cultural and art categories. Therefore the author first attempts to explore the connotation of the neutralization beauty under the general cultural background of Confucian and Daoism. It should be understood that the traditional Chinese painting art is fundamentally based on the spirit of Dao. There is a saying like"painting is Dao and Dao is painting"and people believe that extremely high level art would be achieved if a painter could make his/her work"contain Dao and reflect things". The art of Xieyi(the freehand brushwork drawing) dominated in Chinese traditional painting from the Warring States Silk Painting, to the Han Dynasty Stone/brisk Portrait. In China, the Literator Painting was a typical Xieyi painting with profound and long-term influence. Even in Gongbi(fine drawing, another painting art compared to Xieyi) painting, the skills about how to generalize, whether to accept or reject an expression object in Xieyi painting was widely applied. Therefore the discussion about the art in Xieyi painting is of great significance to drawing expression. Point, line and surface are key elements to the composition of Chinese traditional painting, which are dependent and complementing to one another. Although their importance has been recognized by painters, a systematic and comprehensive discussion about the cause, development and esthetic function of point-line-surface drawing is still needed. This paper is by no means a lengthy account, however the key parts such as the traditional culture connotation, artistic forms, picture composing are included. The paper seeks the balance between history description and remarking and touches almost all famous ancient painters and painting theories.