The Discrimination Of "Nature" Conception In Tang And Song Dynasties Theory Of Painting

Firstly, this paper will study on the concept "Nature" in the painting criticismtheory of Tang and Song, and further analyze its meaning. Based on the study andanalysis, the paper will clarify the abstract meaning of "Nature", and give a generaland concrete idea of the term " Nature " in painting. After that, the paper will payattention to the relation among " Nature ","Yi","Tianran, Tiancheng", and "Zaohua"whose relationship were given rise to a wide and fierce debate all the time to explorethe hidden meaning of these terms and to bring practical methods in the research ofpainting criticism theory history. At last with the help of research methods ofhistorical semantics and the history of ideology, the paper will find that the concept of"Nature" hidden behind the four abstract meaning in the painting criticism theory ofTang and Song stands for the realism tendency which guided aesthetic perception andcriticism perception during that time.The paper consists of three parts to get the whole concept hidden behind"Nature". After studying and analyzing the bibliography, we will conclude that thereare four meanings of "Nature" in the painting criticism theory of Tang and Song. Thefirst meaning refers to specifically the objective of the nature, the second one meansthe abstract laws of nature, the third one means inaction, and the last one does notbelong to the above three categories. Secondly, the paper analyzes some similar wordswith "Nature" such as "Yi","Tianran, Tiancheng", and "Zaohua", their relationshipand similarities and differences among them to make us have a better understandingof these words. Based on the four meanings we concluded before, we will analyze theconcrete meanings in the traditional figure painting, bird and flower painting andlandscape painting to explore the realism tendency hidden behind these concretemeanings. Finally, the paper will get a conclusion on research situations, figure outthe reason why "Nature" was not explained clearly by currently existing research andput forward to practical methods to perform painting criticism theory history.