Art history is characterized by amalgam of magnificent pieces of art that different artists have conventionally produced. New developments have been created because of rubble of ancient cities and artwork found in the caves walls. Through culture behaviors and values are shared by group of people. Better way of survival and living as come up as a result of culture which has been expressed in terms of artwork. The lives of people, their religious beliefs and their talents were expressed in terms of culture. Through these discoveries there were many political, economical and social changes.
Paintings are historical records that teach even the unpleasant lessons from the past. Contemporary painting keeps the art alive (Elkins 2010). The paper compares Chinese painting art with the western oil painting art and it will analyze the aesthetic theory. In painting of 1486, various artists used a large canvas that can accommodate all the aspects of the portrait. They also used exotic pigments including ink and brush that have preserved the authenticity of the art to present.
Chinese art painting
The Chinese painting has traditionally being referred to as brush painting due to the unique material of painting. The Chinese believe that to understand the present the past must be made clear. Through painting artwork analysis interpretation of human condition is done. The mood, time period when the event occurred is always given a priority (Department of Asian Art 2000). The importance of situating a society’s cultural and artistic expressions within a historical context is shown in paintings (Elkins 2010). Culture and creativity has strengthened social ties among communities and this has made individuals to be nurtured. Through painting art there are social problems which have been solved. It is classified in there categories the landscape painting, the figure painting and the bird flower painting.
There is the traditional realistic Chinese painting and the monochrome ink work which is abbreviated. The landscape painting has been a major theme of the painting in china with its origins from the eastern Jin dynasty about more than 16020 years ago. The landscape painting has been called ‘Shan Shui’ in china meaning a river and a mountain. Its purpose is to present nature in its exact appearance and reflect the emotions and feelings of the painter to their life philosophy and the landscape. The materials used in the painting include, writing brush, rice paper and ink but typically painting in china has been created using ink stick, ink brush xuan paper and ink stone. The Chinese artists have exploited ink brushes’ richness in many styles resulting more expressive productions which convey the emotions and feelings of the artist thus becoming the core concern in the Chinese painting. Evidence shows that around the third or the fourth century, calligraphers transitioned from carving bamboo and wood strips to using brushes and ink on silk.
The logic behind Chinese painting transcends the arts itself into social and political realms (Workman, 2011). The idea of painting as an art form meant for the educated and cultured elites has afforded the practice lots of esteem over the years The reign of the Tang dynasty contributed kai shu to the basket of Chinese tea art calligraphy (Goh, 2005). Its attributes make it a potent training area for the calligrapher who’s interested in learning how to coordinate “the eye, the mind and the hand. During the 1980s in china; the changes on the popular cultural practices were made reforms from the first decade to the current decade. In other way it was evident that it was taking it path to another move on the immediate Chinese revolutions on polices up heels and the social lives. The Chinese societies were busy to ground break on this cultures and were setting up new stalls to enlarge on the market. This was due to arrivals of foreign companies in china state which gave the Chinese people an opportunity to leisure on their time. This is when even the Chinese people made an oversight on global investment that really created technological changes in which the china changed and developed on their practices.
When the open policy opened doors of china to the west, Chinese artists were pleasantly surprised to see the variety of free thinking art and its multiple forms. The function and value of Chinese traditional painting were reduced as the cultural and intellectual contexts that sustained it were changed by the rapid development of an industrial and commodity based economy. Chinese tea art was nurtured in a culture that emphasized the ceremony importance and sacrifice importance to achieve harmony among nature, heaven and humankind. The new forms of art have been integrated to technological developments in the west and this has made the Chinese economy become a global economy. There has been a new era of painting which after the period.
Early Chinese paintings played the role of imparting social and moral ideals .Such paintings delivered positive moral judgment by depicting “benevolent emperors, sages, virtuous ministers, loyal generals. On the social front, paintings were done on events with which people had moist memories of china. In the ancient china all the scholars were vehicles of self expression in which painting was regarded as poetry which is silent and poetry regarded as a painting with sound. The scholars trained in the art of calligraphy in other words handwriting art at early stages and used calligraphic brushstrokes to do their paintings. Three perfection gathered together poets, painters and calligraphers to create artworks in the ancient china. The product which resulted was a painting including the work of a calligrapher to writing a poem. The literati-scholars subscribed to a code of aesthetics and used art as an expression of moral and intellectual character.
Today Chinese art has been seen with a calligraphy which is directly to the picture. After an artist is through with a painting, they usually make an inscription which can contain their names and seal and sometimes the date (Sullivan 1986). In addition, the artist can willingly include a poem as a kind of prose which will virtually explore a give topic from either literature, metaphysics or philosophy. The combination of all this creative perfections, painting, poetry and calligraphy which makes an artist become an ultimate achiever. Some of the greatest artist who used the three perfection are Wang Xianzhi (303-79) and Mi Fu (1051-1107).
Western painting
Western painting is believed to have originated from ancient Greece and Rome with its development being contemporaneous with all other forms of art like sculpture, dance and music. Greece holds vast of world history when in comes to invention, communication and other historical believes with valid meanings. The rich history from the ancient Greece has provided the world with important avenues for developments especially in the painting art (Elkins 2010).
Western paintings took the form of murals in cities, vase paintings, and painting in catacombs. There were also magnificent paintings in halls, stoats, temples, and drawing rooms. The theme of western (Greek) paintings mainly revolved around political ideas, myths and memories. The most revered type of painting according to some scholars was paintings made on wooden boards, which were technically referred to as panel paintings. Some of the methods used to create paintings were waxing (encaustic) and tempera. Panel paintings mainly depicted still-life and portraits. Panel paintings from different artists were collected and then displayed in public places. As renaissance painting and visual arts became famous artists began to express the humans and saints on same scales but with the heavenly beings drawn against a golden background. Later the natural landscape became the background. Renaissance painting was a scientific, naturalistic and took a rational approach manifesting itself in various architectural forms.
The contents in western painting art portrayed how art was closely associated with the daily life of humans. The main type of painting in the western culture was the oil painting in which painters drew cloth contents board, thick paper or canvas using oily pigments. This had the theme of color which had a strong expression of the art and usually expressed the objects realistic sense. The western painting aesthetic taste mainly focuses on the aesthetics and authenticity of the objects being painted. To achieve art effects which are real the western painters have paid more attention to the light/shade, proportion, anatomy, perspective and the painting Chroma. The renaissance art was part of western painting. Renaissance painting is the painting sculpture as well as decorative paintings which came up in the period of European history known as the Renaissance. It emerge as a distinct style in Italy in about 14th to 17th century “in parallel with developments which occurred in philosophy, literature, music and science. Renaissance art was perceived as a "rebirth" of ancient traditions” which took its foundation as the art of Classical antiquity.
Sandro Botticelli’s western painting
Birth of Venus’ is a perfect example of the western Renaissance Classicism. “The painting was created by Sandro Botticelli” in 1486, and it is the painter’s artistic interpretation of the famous Greek legend. According to the legend, Venus, “the Greek goddess of love, was born from the sea foam”. On Botticelli’s painting, one sees Venus who is brought to the shore by Zephyr, the god of the west wind. Venus is nude; however, her nudity is modest and is full of dignity. On the other hand, the nudity of Venus was a challenge to the art and ascetic ideology of that time as it was considered shameful and was never painted (Mack 2005).
Botticelli’s work was one of the greatest identified intermingle on the classical poems. The painting represented an artistic inclusion of the features that could only be seen by experienced artists. Botticelli’s powerful art gave the paint stylistic stroke that purported to include the mysteries that were involved in the birth of Venus. On the other hand, the painting has accomplished the divine message intended in Lorenzo’s poem. Botticelli has therefore included every aspect of Greek and ancient mythology in his work.
Comparison between western George Inness and Chinese Xu Fei
Xu Fei, Water Village,
George Inness, the Lackawanna Valley, 1856
The landscapes have been affected by different cultures, religion and politics and they have formulated their own expression forms and aesthetic characteristics. Chinese painting uses strokes to define objects while western painting relies on surfaces lights and shadows. Chinese painting has used “the power of suggestion to capture the essence of objects while traditional western painting relies on the meticulous depiction of the objects form”. The Chinese painting is meant to express the artist’s relationship with natural phenomenon.
Similarities between the two
Many western paintings were affected by the mergence of impressionism and moved from strict representation to impression. This is close to the Chinese method of capturing the essence of objects. The harmonious use of color is another similarity between the Chinese and western paintings as every painting tends to have a dominant color. Their paintings demonstrate that the main goal of religion is to make the human earthly life happy and meaningful, rather than drive it into the rigid framework of fear and blind obedience. Regardless of the theme, the Renaissance paintings chant “the beauty and power of the human spirit”. Visual painting arts are dependent on ideas that validate objects of art and link them with another over space and time.
Conclusion
It can be concluded that the Chinese painting and western paintings were inspired by nature, religion and science. Painting which is a form of visual art is characterized by humanism which is the belief in human potential. An aesthetic theory which can join the contemporary with the traditional arts will help people re-establish contact with our artistic traditions. An aesthetic is reached when a sensuous object has stimulated ones emotions, imagination and intellect. The paintings were affected by the mergence of impressionism and moved from strict representation to impression.
Bibliography
Augustin, B(2010) "Sparse Trees and Pavilion, a Fan Painting by Wang Meng (ca. 1308–1385)": The Metropolitan Museum Journal, v. 45
Elkins, J. (2010). Chinese landscape painting as Western art history. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Goh, S. (2005). Guidelines to Develop Products Forms from Chinese Calligraphy. Viewed on May 29, 2014 from http://etd.auburn.edu/etd/bitstream/handle/10415/604/GOH_YI_27.pdf?sequence=1
Mack,C.R (2005) Looking at the Renaissance: Essays toward a Contextual Appreciation, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 85-87
Sullivan, M. (1986). The arts of China. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sullivan, M. (1999). The three perfections: Chinese painting, poetry, and calligraphy. New York: George Braziller.
Workman, P. (2011). Why Do Chinese Leaders Practice Calligraphy? Viewed on May 30, 2014 from http://www.trinitysaintdavid.ac.uk/en/media/uniweb/content/documents/departments/lrc/thestudentresearcher/ParryWorkman,%20Why%20do%20Chinese%20Leaders%20practice%20Calligraphy.pdf
