Innovation Or Tradition, The Hard Choice Of Lin-Shu As A Painter

Lin-Shu, the most famoustranslator and man of letters in modern China, is also known as a notable painter. This favorable reputation was established at his time, but has gradually faded out as time goes by. Her, this study investigates into Lin's ideas of painting in the context of "Dissemination of Western Learning to the Orient". It is found that Lin had compared paintings of both China and the West, and interpreted the western works from his own point of view. Undoubtedly, what behind his aesthetic attitudes is closely related to his profound acqierement and superiority for his own national culture. Fastened on Chinese culture, he advocated that Chinese painting should advance into a modern level through a path of the tradition instead of other foreign cultures. Because of this, he was labelled a conservative person in the world of new culture pioneers.However, as a matter of fact, Lin was neither the innovative activist who bridged China and the West, nor the conformist following a beaten track. By tracing back the "six principles of Chinese painting" everlasting for thousands of years in China, he jumped out the disputes of different parties, each of which uphelded their own ideology, and rescued Chinese painting from going down due to those self-confined painters. In addition, he proposed a detailed program to "step out of Song dynasty and step in Yuan", which intended to build a basis constituted by the ultimate attainments of the traditional realistic and impressionistic painting style and reach a balance between the appearance and soul of Chinese paintings, in search of a road that led to self-revolution. Lin's ideas of painting went far beyond the political utilitarianism of that time. Oppositely, he summarized and systemized the culture's internal structure, making his ideas of unique value.