Literati Painting, Calligraphy Tendency

Tradional Chinese painting was closely related to calligraphy and its media—Chinese characters , resulting from the great trend of literati painting in history. This dissertation is to examine the development ofthe literati painting under the influence of calligraphy and probe the profound impact of Chinese characters and calligraphy on the literati painting . To achieve this goal, such methods as phylology, culture history, are undertaken, consulting historical documents of calligraphy and painting .combined with style analysis.With calligraphy and the creating methods of Chinese characters as an important reference frame , the literati school of painting showed a trend of calligraphy since it came into being in the Southern dynasties. Over 15 centuries, The painting tried to keep abreast with calligraphy in many aspects, like ways of looking at the world ;abstracting non-figure elements with writing brush;stroke elements and writing style that indicates movement of lines, sense of life ;expression of heart; abstract principles of pictographs, self-explanatory characters, and associative compounds as the miedia of calligraphy which became a latent structure for the painting;abstraction and deeper expression of feeling in running-hand; road from copying to creation, to comphrehensive expression; such compositional sense as "taking blank as black" that characterizes tablet inscription, and other artistic interest, etc.Consulting calligraphic theory, drawing on the experiences of callgraphy, the literati painting took form distinguished by an image between concrete and abstract, prefering writing and expression of inner being to representation while with figure on hand.As in calligraphy, The scholar-painters sought to give expression to some relatively independent beauty reflecting the universal principle (various unity of the opposites)in their paintings and found out cultural and original spirit in folk calligraphy works in remote ages before the literati painting came up.In the course of the development ofthe literati painting, learning from calligraphy, which was an essential part of their knowledge, not only delineated the features of the painting, making it a special and perfect system that embodied Chinese cultural essence,but also helped shape Chinese fine arts.