Primary Research On Building Thoughts And Artistic Style Of Suzhou Private Gardens

Chinese Garden existing as cultural heritages of Chinese civilization, together with the gardens of ancient Greece and southern Asia has an outstanding position in the artistic history. Chinese classical gardens with a long history developed constantly and left countless refined artistic works after several centuries.In1997, Suzhou classical gardens with the gardens in the Ming and Qing dynasties as the subject and the ones in the Tang dynasty were listed in World Heritage List by UNESCO .In the evaluation report, the experts in the fields of garden and architecture spoke highly of the values of Suzhou classical gardens: "Suzhou classical gardens are the demonstration of Chinese history ,the artistic models of building Chinese gardens and the important examples to study the theory of Chinese gardens. China is the mother of the world to build gardens. Suzhou gardens are the outstanding representatives of Chinese gardens."When times came into 1980s and 1990s, a new tide to study the gardens came forth in academic sphere. The research in that time was mainly on the archaeological exploration to ancient gardens' relics and humanistic thoughts. The majority studied garden buildings from architectural technologies and the minority discussed only from the view of aesthetics. But few studied from the angle of society life and historical changes. According to the above analysis on the current situation of garden research, this thesis will grasp the typical examples of Jiangnan gardens---- Suzhou private gardens to investigate and study scientifically the traditional private gardens.The content of this thesis is to master the artistic characteristics of Suzhou private gardens by systematically combing these excellent examples of Chinese gardens. The thesis is divided into three parts. In the first part, Suzhou's historical evolution and the characteristics of geographical culture are introduced. The author draws a conclusion that the ancient city of Suzhou has not only stable histories of several thousand years but also unique humanistic view which are the outer environment of Suzhou gardens' origination and development. The second part describes the development and changes of Suzhou gardens and digs out the art techniques and thoughts of building. The author generalizes the generation, development and climax and discloses the inner motives of Suzhou gardens' booming and prospering. The last part analyzes the artistic styles of Suzhou gardens and induces the conditions to form these styles.The author uses synthetic research method of artistic archaeology to comb humanistic geography elements and development of Suzhou private gardens and makes clear the identities of the owners and garden making thoughts with the humanistic views at that time. The author also analyzes the skills of building the gardens and further discusses the artistic generation and development by connecting the material objects and the historical documents. In the end the author aims to give the readers a further cognition of Suzhou gardens' art.