Spatial Process, Environmental Cognition And Image Expression

As the research object of historical art-geography study,the study on painting from the respect of historical geography mainly focuses on the task of studying painting's cognition and expression of its environment in different history periods.In foreign countries,both art historians and geography schools have worked on this topic at the same time,and obtained the corresponding results.For example,Thomas Kauffman,an American art historian,tried a new way by examining and sorting through the history of art from geographical perspective in his A Way to The Art Geography.Some other works,like Museum Train Accumulation:the Track Image in Art,The Colony Image:Australian Paintings in the Years 1800-1880,The mountain Image:the Computerized Drawing of Art Maps,from the perspective of human-geography relationships,did geographical investigations by looking at painting art as a regional population's various cognitive responses,concrete or abstract,to certain geographic phenomenon perceived by them.In the domestic,in the art circles have emerged"regional studies" on regional painting history,regional painting schools and painting art.However,from the viewing angles of geographical environment and human-geography relationships,rarely have people ever regarded the works of art as the cognitive outcomes of geographical environment,and then further studied the artistic expression of geographical environment in history periods.The theme of this paper is to study the spatial characteristics and the artistic expression of environment of Chinese drawing art in the history periods of mainland.By reviewing the plentiful interaction between drawing art and its geographical environment in history,this paper is to explore creation subjects' cognition and artistic expression of environment in their works of drawing art,and then to expand the scope of geographical cognition subjects.This study is done on two layers:macroscopic research and microscopic discussion.The macroscopic research on the geographical foundation and the spatial characteristics of Chinese ancient drawing aims at grasping the overall spatial pattern change of Chinese ancient drawing.By interpreting the spatial distribution and its characteristics of the drawing types in different Chinese history periods,we have found that drawing art,in addition to relying on geographical environment,has formed its regional patterns in the process of its temporal and spatial evolution,with clearly different features.The drawing center in Chinese history has always been moving alternatively between the north and the south of China,in the trendy of curve change.The case study from the micro perspective is meant to further interpret how drawing art cognizes and expresses environment through case series,which is achieved mainly through natural environment,human space,the emotional geography and the visual representation of local culture.The specific study process includes restoring the spatial distribution of the drawing art types in history periods and the art features of different times and spaces.The comparative analysis on the "similarities" and "differences"between the environment expressed in drawings and the objective environment has led to such main conclusions as follows:Firstly,the spatial distribution of drawing types differs obviously with the development of drawing in different history periods.The drawing of early times existed by getting attached to,first,environmental carriers and then artifacts and buildings.It not only created environmental landscape together with its carriers,but also formed complicated human-environment relationships through pictures' production and display.After the Qin and Han Dynasties,the types of drawing art were distributed mainly in political centers,economically developed areas and the important lines of communications,while the drawing talents mainly gathered in the capital cities,with the drawing centers in the Yellow River Basin.The drawing style differences between the north and the south were formed in the Wei and Jin periods.During the Song and Yuan Dynasties,the drawing centers moved to the south of the Yangzi River,and stayed there ever since until the end of feudal society.The northern minorities,along with their fusion with Han culture,formed a drawing style of expressing their unique geographical environment.During the Ming and Qing Dynasties,the drawing center was located in the south.The drawings at that time displayed,directly and indirectly,some more or less objective artistic expression about the geographical environment with the displacement of the regional economic center.The areas influential in drawing had been changing gradually and successively from Suzhou to Hangzhou,Yangzhou and to Shanghai,showing prominent characteristics of time order and space displacement.Secondly,the space pattern of the drawing activities center in history periods is"always on the move" between the north and the south,and in the trendy of curve change.The Qin and Han Dynasties took the Yellow River Basin as their drawing activities center,while the Eastern Jin Dynasty,taking the advantage of the unrest in the Wei and Jin periods,formed a short-lived drawing art center in its momentarily easy area.When the Sui and Tang Dynasties got to their peak with their powerful nation strength once again in the Yellow River Basin,Chang' an and Luoyang,the capital cities,displayed strong appeal to the drawing artists then,and,therefore,the drawing art center was once again established in the Yellow River Basin.In the Five Dynasties period,the transient turbulence helped develop two drawing flourished regions in West Sichuan and South Tang.During the Northern Song Dynasty,the art policy of its drawing academy attracted the attention of the drawing artists back to the creation space in the north.However,when its two emperors were captured and killed by a northern minority tribe in the years of Jing and Kang,the drawing art center was moved to the south again where there was formed an art circle on the south Yangzi River centered in Hangzhou,and remained there ever since.The northern and southern drawings are distinctively different in time and space.The northern drawing art was mainly composed of the mainstream drawing,with its artists conducting their drawing creations around the capital areas and their works of art clearly serving the politics.Large-scale art activities were being carried out by the official support.On the contrary,the southern drawing art was striving with its creation in the political space during the split period,with its drawing style pursuing fractures,impressionism,personality and aesthetic imagery.Finally,regulation characteristic is found in creation subjects' cognition and expression of environment,which is mainly based on observing picture landscape and the subjects' living space.The regularity can be broadly divided into five categories based on the relationships between the artistic expression and the geographical environment of drawings.One is about the comparison of a creation subject's life space and his artistic expression space.The creation subject's reconstruction of geographical landscape originates from his individual visual cognition regarding space environment from "the past".If an image in his memory best fits the landscape to be expressed in a work of art,the creation subject will record the geographical environment unconsciously,and represent it in a clear perception style.Another is about a creation subject's cognition and expression of natural environment.Although the expression approach of art is not to reproduce the objective as the goal,it is to grasp and perform the basic environmental characteristics as the foundation,which carries a certain amount of geographical information.A third is about the expression of human space.Picture landscape seems not directly linked to environment,however,the study of the cultural space and historical events in relevant regions proves creation subjects' comprehension and expression of human space in their drawings.A fourth is that cultural events that occurred in certain geographical space easily become creation subjects' carriers of artistic expression.Arousing the readers'Geography Emotion with the help of the art depicting of geographical space is a process of symbolizing the drawing art with regional theme in ancient China,showing distinctive features of human-geography relationships of that time.A fifth is that drawing carries the information about social environmental changes in a region.The basic characteristics of natural environment in a region,the aesthetic habits of the region's population and the development of the region's economic environment all influence the choice of art language with drawing,and at the same time,indirectly convey creation subjects' cognition and expression of the geographical environment.