Simple But Classical

Basic on the artistic creation of the Chinese Traditional Landscape Painting, this paper focus on the classical painting techniques and observation dimensions, try to find out the proper approach to inherit the tradition and enhance the art expression. Through the reviewing and researching on typical blue-and-queen landscape paintings of QianXuan, the advocate of the classical art who was famous by his important theory about "ShiQi" in Yuan dynasty, we prefer that a different aesthetics consciousness was transforming in the early Yuan period. Comparing with the great progress depend on skills accumulation in Song dynasty, consideration about landscape painting itself, personal styles and how to express thoughts behind seems more important than focusing on skills only. A more inward,more emotional dimension was transforming.Chinese landscape painters in early Yuan period, represented by QianXuan who seek alternative way out of the situation that simply pays attention to technology ignoring spirit cultivation, emphasized on the renewal of landscape painting by absorbing from classical inking and coloring skills in ancient blue-and-green works or murals. All of these attempts advanced on the improving of "brush skill", using which not only describes mountains and rivers look like, but also feelings and emotions that expressing by softy and variable painting brushes.Applying coloring skills and clam shell powder as basal medium can create volume of the mountain stones during the landscape painting. That’s how QianXuan’s works describe texture and the sense of seeing stones and mountains images as an object in the space. Comparing with simply improving brush skills in artistic expression, What we try to study out in this paper is QianXuan’s skills and thoughts absorbed from ancient blue-and-green landscape or murals can just lead to a more effective path to create volume,avoiding over stylized performance methods."Simple but classical", is an important topic in QianXuan’s landscape painting creation. And also a key to hold the balance between reasonable expression and over-decoration.