Discussion On The Concept Of Shi Tao's Painting Landscapes

Artists try to explore new ideas of the art by observing nature and experiencing life. The painters of landscape also want to take the objective things to their paintings by observing and comprehending nature.Shi Tao was one of the famous painters in the early Qing Dynasty. Diverse subjects and variety of images characterized his works of landscape. His skills of painting inherited the fruit of the predecessor, meanwhile had his innovations, which had great influence on his generations and later generations. He visited a lot and painted a lot, expressing his ideas in his works. On the basis of practice, he wrote a book on the painting, named Arts of Painting by Bitter Gourd Monk. In this book, he put forward some famous theories such as "the Great Oneness of Visual Arts", painting should have contemporary characteristics; drafts based on the abundant observation of landscapes. His painting theories were highly thought of by the later painters, and were epoch-making creations. The painting theories of Shi Tao expressed the ideas such as "the Great Oneness of Visual Arts", life, rest and so on. All the images in his painting came from the nature and expressed his understanding about nature and life, at the same time, merged the painter's thought and the objective. The viewpoints such as the Drafts based on the abundant observation of landscapes, No formula is the formula are the main contents of his sketch's concept, which reflected the sketch's concept of ancient China and also were original. Anyone, who wants to understand the relationship of the thoughts of an artist, the objects and the images he has painted, should study his main theories.Firstly, the thesis analyses the development and the content of Chinese traditional concepts of sketching, discusses the similarities and the differences between the Chinese views and the Western views on sketching.Secondly, it discusses Shi Tao' important views of painting by studying how his views of sketching came into being, the main contents of his sketching views and the application of his views in his works.The hardcore of Shi Tao's theories is "the Great Oneness of Visual Arts", which explained the relationship between nature and painting, the relationship between the artist and the objects, and the relationship between painting and the spiritual world of artists, etc. From the aspect of the materialization of human being and nature, it illustrated that the aesthetic objects and the painter's ideology should return to the origin of art, and with a microscopic perspective of the landscape painting's development, it elaborated the painting views of Shi Tao, the thought of which in width and depth was incomparable in his age. Shi Tao argued the painter should paint basing on nature and melting painter's emotions and techniques, and reformed the sketching theories of the ancient into his works by feeling nature. He arranged the composition/layout according to the sketching theories, and then painted it out. So the images in Shi Tao's paintings were all from nature and life, which was the stuff of real emotions and the real attractions to people.His paintings illustrated the theory "learning from nature and getting the feeling of painting source", which was advocated by Zhang Zao, an ancient painter. Human beings have learned to pay attention to nature and appreciate nature through comprehending nature and learning from nature. The painting reflects the painter's feeling, which contributed greatly to the birth of painting art. Painters of landscape express their own aesthetic emotions and standards by the images in paintings, which come from natural landscapes.The article mainly discusses Shi Tao's views of sketching, by which, we hope that we can find out the art origin of Shi Tao, and make some contribution to help understand the traditional concept of sketching.