On The Shi Tao’s Ideas Of Painting From Nature Of Landscape Paintings

Shi Tao was the most creative artist and theorist in the end Ming and Qing Dynasty. In his whole-life practice of painting, he always emphasize on ’learn from the reality’ on the basis of the inherited tradition of excellence of the ancients. He thought that life was the source of painting creation. Having obtained over10years’ experience from viewing the well-known mountains and ’rivers, he perceived the profound artistic thoughts on the basis of his painting practice, and wrote the famous painting aesthetics book named the record of painting language, in which he came up with’God meets mark’,’no rules is the best way’,’search for every strange peak and make an outline’and other theories about painting. He brought new livingness and energy to the academic atmosphere at that time, when Chinese paintings’techniques stereotyped and imitated the ancients, so that Chinese painting found its own way. His theories about painting are highly respected by the later generations of painters and calligraphers and influences later ages. This thesis is a comparatively comprehensive generalization and interpretation about his painting aesthetics thoughts of painting from nature. It is divided into four parts to discuss.The first chapter briefly introduces Shi Tao’s stormy life and the cultural background that imitating the ancients was popular. The second chapter mainly discusses the basic conceptions about his ways of painting from nature. At the beginning, it gives a short introduction to painting from nature, discusses the differences and similarities about the ideas of painting from nature between China and western countries, and this chapter chiefly expounds ’one painting’ theory and the basic conceptions of painting from nature, such as ’elementary education’,’life’and ’God meets mark’.’One painting’theory is the core of his picture criticism, which explains the relationship between nature and painting and the one between subjects and objects. If we want to understand his painting aesthetics thoughts of painting from nature, we must start with ’one painting’ theory and know about its recognition rules. However,’elementary education’ and ’life’ are the most important aesthetic conceptions which belong to’one painting’ theory. So this chapter will start with these two conceptions and explain the relationship between them and painting from nature. Shi Tao not only took the proposition that a painter should respect for the objective nature, that is, he should base on mountains and waters, so he gave the conception of search for every strange peak and make an outline’, but he argued that the painter should put his own emotions into his works on the basis of the nature thing in order to express his aesthetic emotions and tendency, and further came up with the proposition of’I meet the mountains and waters magically and then I am more creative’. In his own paintings, he also used these ideas to measure the reasonableness of the composition of pictures, and used the way ’learn from the nature’ to generalize and summarize the imageries, then focused on painting creation. The third chapter mainly presents a concrete analysis of his conceptions of painting from nature,which is from the perspectives of respecting for feelings, words, and textural stroke. On the basis of the analysis on the chapters above, the forth chapter discusses the influence of his ideas of painting from nature:on the one hand, he created plenty of works as a practice for his ideas, on the other these ideas influence later ages deeply and serve as an enlightenment. By this objective and comprehensive analysis on Shi Tao’s ideas of painting from nature, I hope this thesis can play a positive role in helping contemporary Chinese landscape painters understand old conceptions about ’painting from nature’ and painting practice as well.