Analysis Of Kuo Hsi, Landscape Art Characteristics

Guo Xi, also named Chun Fu, is an outstanding painter in the Song Dynasty. He was born in He yang wen County (today's Meng County in Henan Province). He is known as " Guo He yang".He was born with unique quality and is very talented. In the year of Xining he worked in the ImperialAcademy and was promoted to be the academician awaiting instructions. He was good at landscape painting. In his early time he drew exquisitely and ingeniously, later he learned from Li Cheng. From then on he depicted delicately and formed his own style. He drew enormous barriers and high walls, huge pines and woods, which seem to have clouds emerging and peaks appearing. In terms of composition and brushwork he had no equal in his time. A poem by Su Dong po said: "Lying down and appreciating Guo Xi's painting, you find yourself in the green woods". Both Li Cheng and Guo Xi could combine water and ink as well as colors in the drawing, others in the are academy all imitated them. When he talked about the way to draw mountains he always said: "Mountains in spring seem to smile; mountains in summer are green and seem to be drop; mountains in fall are clear and seem to have used cosmetics; mountains in winter seem to sleep". He often traveled to famous mountains and great rivers to sketch. He was good at drawing stones which looked like ghost face, dry brush of thunderhead, pine needles looking like eagle's talons and various leaves. He maintained that painting should be connected to real life and objected shapeless and illusive landscape paintings. He also opposed conventionality and held that painters should draw inspiration from nature and, at the same time learn from other. His main artworks were: Early Spring, Visiting friends in mountains in spring, Painting of mountains and rivers, Snow in spring in Guanshan, Quiet valley, Autumn clear up in Xishan, etc. He also wrote a book entitled Lin Quan Gao Zhi, which had six chapters, that is, the prelude, ideas of drawing, skills of drawing, supplement to drawing styles and topics of drawing. In the book, he summarized experience in traditional painting, created the method of "Three Remoteness" (that is High Remoteness, Horizontal Remoteness, Deep Remoteness), which laid foundation for cavalier perspective of Chinese landscape painting. Guo Xi is a famous painter in the Northern Song Dynasty. His accomplishment and contribution to landscape painting is marvelous. In terms of aesthetic realm and craftsmanship, he was by no means inferior to Li Cheng, Fan Kuan, Dong Yuan, Ju Ran who were prior to his time. Painter in the Southern Song Dynasty such as Li Tang, Zhao Boxiao, Zhao Boju, Ma Yuan and Xia Gui could only hold a candle to Guo Xi.