Characteristics of Chinese Traditional Painting

Write a painting, read a picture
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Fragment of a painting of Luo Ping (1733 - 1799), Qing Dynasty.
The Chinese usually use the brush to write. Thus, the calligrapher and painter share the same materials (brush, ink and silk or paper), make use of the same basic strokes and judge their work by the same criteria: the vitality and expressiveness of the brushwork and harmonious rhythm the composition. Therefore, ARE HEREBY Calligraphy and Painting Arts Center.

Given its intrinsic relationship with calligraphy, Chinese painting is essentially a line art. The Chinese have become simple lines in a highly developed art. The lines are used not only to draw contours, but also to express the artist's concepts and feelings. For subjects and different objectives, they use a variety of lines: straight or curved, hard or soft, thick or thin, light or dark, wet or dry. The use of lines and strokes is one of the elements giving Chinese painting its unique qualities.

Qichang Dong Work (1555-1636), Ming Dynasty.
Chinese painters, generally, have not been interested in reflecting reality and three-dimensional mass through grants as shading and perspective, but have focused on transmit, through the rhythmic movement of the brush, their perception of the essence of things.

It is surprising that a painting based on the line and the stroke rather than the nuances and gradations, can produce such a sense of volume, topography, depth and atmosphere. This is due both to the extraordinary diversity and richness of the stroke as the wise and resource utilization as full-empty. So, to give prominence to the main topic, it is lawful to completely skip the background and simply leave it blank.


Another feature of the Traditional Chinese Painting is not using the Western fashion perspective, but shows the space into a kind of progressive vision: to contemplate a painting "vertical", hanging on the wall at the height of a viewer sitting, eye level, bottom up, the degrees of distance, on the contrary, in paints "horizontal", which are as they are unwound, the sight is horizontal motion. This progressive vision brings us to a different reality which centered perspective provides a single point of view.

Four Arts in One


Often the presence, in the same table, four different arts: painting, poetry, calligraphy and seal impressions. The texts calligraphed and seal impressions help explain the painter's ideas and feelings, as well as add decorative beauty to the painting.

A good example of this is the painting "In a mountain road in spring" by Ma Yuan (act. 1190-1225) of the Southern Song Dynasty: A walk down the mountain scholar; following in their footsteps, a servant carries the ch'in of his master, a musical instrument similar to a zither. The scholar has paused to watch two orioles in windblown willow. The stanza of a poem, right, steals the show and its atmosphere:

   "Kissed by his sleeves, wild flowers dancing in the wind;

     Escaping from him, hidden birds interrupt their songs. "




The Form and Content
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The high religious art, as such, is outside the Traditional Chinese Painting, there is no room for war, violence, nudity, death or martyrdom. No address any topic that is not inspiring, noble, refreshing to the spirit or at least charming. In traditional Chinese art is not an art conceived purely formal, separate from the contents: it is not enough that the form be beautiful if the content is unedifying.