No One Of The Wild

“The State of Depth and Tranquility”is one of the many implications and sentiments that ancient Chinese landscape paintings have always favored to express. In terms of implication, they radiate the inclination of poets, writers, painters to seclude, reflecting the hermit side in their characters. When it comes to sentiment, they intend to connote a sense depth, winding and tranquility. This dissertation aims to enlighten on “the State of Depth and Tranquility” from the perspectives of its philosophical context, basic aesthetic forms, structures and aesthetic significance. Philosophically,landscapes were the means by which Lao Tze and Zhuang Tze experienced and understood the subtle profundity of universe, which laid the foundation for succeeding cultural perception of the subtle profundity of landscapes, it also formed the philosophy behind the State. In the Wei,Jin,Southern and Northern dynasties, men of letters placed their preference of seclusion on painting deep and tranquil landscapes,providing the State with aesthetic significance as well as a basic aesthetic form. The State was increasingly acknowledged and applied, and it could be witnessed in various structures painters presented through diverse techniques,as landscape paintings,which portrayed hermits dwelling in mountains and their charisma,developed. What the State is rendering from the aesthetic point of view is how those paintings experience and understand landscapes and extreme “depth”, and how they serve to mitigate the contraction between the scholar side and the hermit side within their personality.