Zen Buddhism And Chinese Landscape Painting—Comparison Of Dong Qichang And Dan Dang

During the Ming Dynasty, Zen blended with Xinxue, with promoted to change the whole society consciousness and humanistic atmosphere. What’s more, it spread to the field of culture and art, so many literaties are involved in the artistic movement of personality liberation actively. They put Zen thoughts into their artistic theory and artistic creation, which made the relationship between Zen and the art of calligraphy and painting closer increasingly. It can be said that Dong Qichang was an outstanding representative of Zen when he was young. Zen painting in the Ming Dynasty. He began to contact with Zen when he was young. Zen had great influence on his artistic development. This is reflected in both his artistic theory and chinese landscape paintings. His chinese landscape paintings are in the pursuit of “light”, owing to the influence of Zen. These paintings show beauty of wateriness, smooth and elegance.Thanks to his lofty social prestige as well as incisive and original artistic views, he made a great impact on the painters of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Yunnan monk Dan Dang was one of them, who was good at poems, calligraphy and painting. His painting art was under the tutelage of Dong Qichang, however, his understanding of Zen and presentation of Zen art were as good as Dong Qichang. Dan Dong’s chinese landscape paintings have a special style with Zen, showing a simple, bleak and enthereal beauty.The thesis is set in the great background of Zen thoughts, trying to start with comparing Dong Qichang’s chinese landscape paintings to Dan Dang’s. It explores the influence of Zen buddhism on their chinese landscape painting art. It also makes their different ways of Zen painting and artistic pursuit more clear. The main content of the thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter is the comparision of Dong Qichang’s life and Dan Dang’s. It obtains their different life experiences through the analysis in detail. As a result, their attitudes towards Zen Buddhism are also different from each other. The second chapter is the comparision of their artistic views.Although they were all addicted to Zen and both of their artistic views were from Zen thoughts, they still had lunique characters. The third chapter is the comparision of their chinese landscape painting’s resources. They both followed the traditional style of painting from Song and Yuan Dynasties, what’s more, Dan Dang was under the tutelage of Dong Qichang, but their performances of chinese landscape paintings are identical.The fourth chapter is the comparision of their artistic expressions. It includes three aspects, there are painting of brush and ink, painting tricks and artistic conception,which shows the direct analysis of their similarities and differences of their chinese landscape paintings. So we can find different influence of their chinese landscape painting art as a result of Zen Buddhism.