The Study On The Brushworks, And Methods Of Ink And Water Of Landscape Painting Of Chang'an School

The Chang'an School is known for the landscape paintings in Northwestern China. It belongs to the larger artistic school of Northern Landscape Painting and constitutes the tripartite in the 20th century's traditional Chinese painting circles together with Jinling and Lingnan schools. The Chang'an School is playing a leading role in Chinese modern painting since the second half of the 20th century by founding the so-called New Chinese Paintings with the striking features of modern society, the regional and courageous styles. This dissertation, based on an objective and systematic analysis of the painting skills, summarizes the peculiar style of the landscape paintings of the Chang'an school. This dissertation also proposes a meditation upon the artistic thinking of this school. As for the academic research of the Chang'an School, some cases evaluations are already available, however, systematic and in-depth enquiries into their painting skills are still in want. Many critical works just conducted brief summaries concerning the overall profile of the painting skills and lacked the detailed analysis of the brushworks and methods of the usage of ink and water. Therefore, it is worth providing detailed and deep investigations on these two aspects concerning the particular painting skills of the Chang'an School. By and large, the style of the Chang'an School landscape painting is mainly influenced by the three major aspects. Firstly, this school is heavily influenced by the traditions of the Chinese painting. Many landscape painters of this school have borrowed and sought the painting skills of the northern school painters in the Five Dynasties, the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties, Shi Tao in Ming and Qing Dynasties, and also the skills of folk arts in different historical periods. The painting skills of the Chang'an School are known to derive and purify the wonderful elements and integrated these elements into their own paintings. In the second place, this school is also strongly impacted by the magnificence of the nature. The painters of this school successfully penetrated into essence of the nature of the great northwest part of the country by carrying on extremely subtle observation and seeking artistic significance real life. They successfully depicted the landscapes and took essence of the nature and abandoned its outward appearance. They didn't just imitate the natural scenery but integrated their thought and the genuine meaning of the nature into their painting works. Therefore, the brushworks and methods of the use of ink and water of the Chang'an School painters exhibited the strikingly regional characteristics, and created a deep, rich, but simple and cordial life atmosphere. Thirdly, under the influence of the particular time and background, the painters of the school eulogized the beautiful landscape of the motherland and socialist construction since the establishment of People's Republic of China. They broke through the rigidly conventional pattern and developed new styles of landscape paintings, and finally entered into a new artistic wonderland. Their brushworks and methods of the use of ink and water well signified a stronger spirit of the age. In other words, this painting methodology, borrowed from tradition on one hand but actualized into the real life on the other hand, reflects not only a global manner but shows some striking individual characteristics-rustic, boundless, charm, magnificent, solid, fresh, tranquil and natural-emphasizing "qi", "li" and the flavor of brushworks and methods in using ink and water, therefore the landscape paintings of the Chang'an school are vigorous, forceful, and dignified, embodying the painters of the Chang'an school's true love towards the nature and their traditional painting skills.To conclude, as far as the development and change of the Chang'an School is concerned, the author doesn't think that the school withers away. And Chang'an School will be revitalized if the artists absorb what can be absorbed from tradition, use what can be used from other artistic forms, and excavate what can be excavated from life. They should stick to the "tradition-vs-reality" principle and "painting-with-the-change-of-time" principle, being more open-minded, assimilative and creative out of novelty from commonplace.