| Environmental aesthetics is a kind of aesthetic theory, which regards nature as the center of its study. It regards natural beauty and its aesthetic value as the major object of study, changing the limitations of art philosophy, and widening the research area of traditional aesthetics. It makes environment be equal to art, so that environmental aesthetics gained equal status with the artistic aesthetics. There are many related or similar ideas in Chinese classical culture, especially the exploration and pursuit of natural beauty is the source of aesthetic environment. As the basis, the beautiful natural environment in Chinese classical gardens can be the ideal space for literati’s living and travelling. So environment became one of the aesthetic objects of ancient literati, and then garden enters the research perspectives of environmental aesthetics.In the history of Chinese ancient garden, the vocabularies related to the early garden were Yuan and palatial garden. Yuan was a place surrounded with walls, and in which there were trees, flowers, vegetables, and domestic animals; palatial garden was the place with domestic anima! for monarch or noble’s touring and hunting.Qin and Han Dynasty is the first climax of the history of Chinese gardening. During this period, the main kind of gardens was the Royal Palace. The palace covered the circumference of hundreds Li, and combined with surrounding landscape. The basic principle of its construction was imitating the images that cleave to Heaven and Earth, and arranging the structure according to Yin and Yang. The monar’hs of Qin and Han Dynasty were fanatical about Immortality, so they put the Penglai fairyland of myth into the garden. Qin Shi Huang made Chang’an be the capital, created a pool with Wei Shui, and built Peng and Ying. According to the word built, we can know that Peng and Ying are both artificial hillock, and this may be the beginning of artificial hillock in the history of Chinese garden. After that, Han Wu Di extended the Shang Lin Palace. The scope of pool in Shang Lin Palace was great, and there were also many mythic factors, just like the name of hills, Peng Lai, Fang Zhang, Ying Zhou, and Hu Liang. The appearance of them.showed the monarchs’pursuit to Immortality, enriched the idea of garden art to a certain extent, and promoted the development of garden art. This form of one pool together with three islands was included in the overall layout of garden, and became the traditional mode of imperial garden. So it was called Apotheosis of Qin and Han Dynasty.In Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Confucianism’s function of supporting the social psychology was weakened, so the culture changed to many different trends. The idea of Tao was blended to Buddhism, so that the new idea which was called metaphysics came out, and became a powerful social trend. The metaphysicians advocated abandoning etiquette for the sake of nature. So they roamed between the lan(?)scapes, reviewed the life, and thought about the value of survival, made the main view of universe changed. They began to ignore the ethereal heaven and future, while paid more attention to the real life of this world. In this case. Literates need the garden for spiritual pursuit, at the same time, the development of self-sufficient economic from the Eastern Flan Dynasty provided a solid economic basis for this need.During this period, the royal gardens continued developing. All of the regimes built their own palace, to show their orthodox status which was given by heaven, such as Tong Que Yuan, Fang Lin Yuan, Hua Lin Yuan, and You Yu Yuan. Outside of the royal gardens, private gardens had showed a booming trend, and formed two types of garden forms:one type was the noble gardens which advocated pomp and circumstance, just like the garden Jin Gu Yuan, which was built by the courtier Shi Chong, Inside of it, not only the pavilions were very gorgeous, but also the art of garden layout was smart, and the water features and landscaped scenery of the park was prominent. The other was literati gardens which was Simple and elegant for people to edify temperament, such as the gardens of Xie An, Xie Lingyun, and Wang Daozi, were all emphasized the beauty of the impressionistic landscapes.When the private gardens were booming, temple gardens began to appear. In fact, since Buddhism was taken to China in Eastern Han Dynasty, the Buddhist temples were born. In the beginning, the Buddhist temples were just the space for saluting the Buddha, while due to the need of sandhana, they often located in beautiful places. So many monks rested there, and many believers travelled there too, then they made gardens around the temples gradually. In other hand, many people gave their houses for wats, and the gardens of these houses were changed to temples. All of these made outstanding contributions to the flourish of the temple gardens.The forms of Chinese ancient garden were basically complete in Southern and Northern Dynasties, and the development of garden had a profound influence on the construction of future gardens. This article plans to explore the major environmental aesthetic activities and aesthetic concepts of this period from the development of garden. On the one hand, it inherited the spirit of Qin and Han’s royal gardens, and on the other hand, it opened the history of literati gardens, in which gentry was the subject of aesthetics and nature was the object of aesthetics. After that, the literati garden had gradually been the object of Chinese classical garden, and leaded the developing direction of it. This breakthrough had changed the aesthetic tendency, and the natural characteristic of Chinese classical garden had come into being. From now on, the builders began to use an eye for beauty to pay attention to the nature, and took more activities in the garden to get the spiritual pleasure. So the eyes, ears, nose, tongue and body had been all the aesthetic tools.In the garden, they extensively used the concept of environmental aesthetics, seek after the natural style, such as requiring using the means Yin and Jiee, making the gardens more ingenious, while at the same requiring it looked like the nature. In the natural atmosphere, it can completely embodied the beauty of hermitage.The whole article just wants to elucidate the environmental aesthetic ideas of that period through the analysis of garden’s development in Southern and Northern Dynasties, so that to get the aesthetic ideas which is connected with the modern environmental aesthetics from the ancient garden, in order to better understand the contemporary aesthetic spirit. |
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