The Features Of Shallow Of Landscape Painting In The Southern Song Dynasty To Yuan Knot

Painting had its height in the Song and Yuan dynasty in Chinese history, which was prominent in its transformation. As political, social and cultural changes during this period instigated new transformation of painting both in content and style, the advancement of the way combining cloud and water in landscape painting demonstrated the spectacularity of the northern Song dynasty and intrinsic beauty of southern Song dynasty, as well as the far-reaching feeling and leisure of the Yuan dynasty precisely. The application of element cloud and water not only enriched the image, also increased its momentum and flexibility, which promoted the aesthetic value and style of painting in this period.With the movement of painters from north to south, their aesthetic value and composition for works had changed. That is, the panoramic effect of northern Song dynasty had changed into the view of detailed places of southern Song dynasty, such as corners or side streets. In addition, painters in southern Song dynasty had composed their works by simply consisting images rather than lay emphasizes on complicated and profound composition. Their style also transferred from focus on reality to expression of emotions. The illustration of cloud and water in landscape paintings followed those changes, so that it is easy to explain the rapid developments for demonstration of cloud and water elements in the Song dynasty. For example, the bold way of using blank space on paper employed by painters in southern Song dynasty was found in the paintings that using heavy pigments to draw empty water and cloud, creating the effect of floating cloud, which showed the flexibility and far-reaching conception. Moreover, the shapes of clouds represented varieties in this period, such as the scape of cloud extended from cloud to smoke, fog, haze, rosy clouds, vapor and floating clouds. Although these changes happened naturally, they stood for predominant transformation in the evolvement of painting.The particular political situation, complex relationship among different nations allowed the painters in the Yuan dynasty expressed their nature into the landscape paintings freely and resulted in the unique artistic form. Different artistic forms in every developing stages led to a varieties of changes for clouds and water. Consequently, the images of clouds and water embraced abundant and multi-leveled content were much simpler. Since the Yuan dynasty attached great importance on the uniform of painting and calligraphy, painters put more interesting ways of writing into the images of clouds and water. On the other hand, the combination of sketch with the way using loose and dense brushes and leaving blank space to outline cloud and water portrayed distinct aesthetic effect, which reflected from the expression of their emotions when painters in Yuan dynasty drew cloud and water.This thesis has three sections: the first chapter analyzes the origin of transformation of element cloud and water in landscape paintings of the northern and southern Song dynasty from the aspect of background information of painting in the southern Song and Yuan dynasty. The second chapter illustrates the specific function of element cloud and water in landscape paintings, such as the distinctive effects made by the drawing of cloud and water, the way using raised trail of slip and drawing empty cloud and applying heavy pigments. Furthermore, it also describes the composition of cloud and water, as well as the role and meaning of cloud and water in strengthening the images, intensifying the rhythm and extending painting’s effects. The third chapter discussed the features and forms of cloud and water through certain works of typical landscape painters in the southern Song and Yuan dynasty. It also demonstrated the influence of cloud and water in those dynasties upon later cultures. In conclusion, the purpose of research in this thesis is to build a legible and complete knowledge system of learning, referring and summarizing the employment of element cloud and water of the landscape paintings in the southern Song and Yuan dynasty and potentially exploit the development of cloud and water in future landscape painting on this basis.