Traveling In The Sea Of ​​clouds

This paper will analyze and sort the image of "Cloud" and aesthetic expression of it in ancient and modern art works with a comparison between China and western paintings. As beginning, the paper illustrates the image of "Cloud" in Chinese traditional and western paintings. Due to the differences in cultural perspectives, aesthetic consciousness, and philosophical thinking, the forms of visual language are different between cultures. "Lively spirit and charm style" as a crucial standard to appreciate traditional Chinese painting determine the forms of "Cloud" in image and ideology. To be specific, the image of "Cloud" in traditional Chinese painting by intangible and faraway touch expresses contradictory image, illusory but real, vacant but opaque, compact but penetrable. "Cloud" as an image reflects the unification of "existing" and "nothing" in Taoism. Unlike traditional Chinese painting, western artists have diverse understanding of "Cloud" in their works. From classicism to modernism, the image of "Cloud" in western paintings can be religious, breaking the frame of perspective, token of subconsciousness, or simply as could itself. To summarize, "Cloud" visually exists both as illusory image or a symbol of metaphor in traditional Chinese and western paintings. By comparative study method, the author is trying to analyze image of "Cloud" as a symbol expressing special meanings and independent forms.