Appreciation of Chinese and Western Garden Art —— Learning from the Identification of Chinese and Western Garden Art

From ancient times to the present, whether in China or the West, the pursuit and creation of beauty by human beings is almost perfect. A large number of masterpieces handed down from ancient times in garden design are full of people's various opinions and understandings of beauty, leaving behind not only amazement, but also inexhaustible motivation for people to study hard.

From ancient times to the present, whether in China or the West, the pursuit and creation of beauty by human beings is almost perfect. A large number of masterpieces handed down from ancient times in garden design are full of people's various opinions and understandings of beauty, leaving behind not only amazement, but also inexhaustible motivation for people to study hard. As future generations, we should work harder, stand on the shoulders of great men and create more far-reaching glory.

Let's take a look at the respective characteristics of Chinese and western garden art, and appreciate the differences between Chinese and western cultures and the wonderful workmanship of human beings.

Due to different historical backgrounds and cultural traditions, Chinese and Western gardens have different styles and characteristics. Although China gardens are divided into northern royal gardens and private gardens in the south of the Yangtze River, and there are many differences, western gardens have different styles such as ancient gardens, medieval gardens and Renaissance gardens due to different historical development stages. But generally speaking, Chinese and western gardens are dominated by different philosophical and aesthetic ideas, and their forms and styles are still very distinct.

Artificial beauty and natural beauty

The differences between Chinese and western gardens in form are very obvious. Western gardens embody artificial beauty, which is not only symmetrical, regular and rigorous in layout, but also square in flowers and plants, thus showing a geometric beauty. Phenomenologically, western gardening mainly uses artificial methods to change its natural state. The gardens in China are completely different, neither seeking axial symmetry nor following any laws. On the contrary, they are surrounded by mountains and waters, full of twists and turns. Not only do flowers and trees leave the original appearance of nature, but even artificial buildings try to conform to nature, uneven and strive to integrate with nature.

Humanized nature and personification of nature

Because gardening is inseparable from nature, China and the West have very different attitudes towards nature. Although natural beauty is also mentioned in western aesthetic works, it is only a material or source of beauty. Natural beauty itself is flawed, and it can't be perfect without artificial transformation, that is to say, natural beauty itself has no independent aesthetic significance. Hegel has specifically discussed the defects of natural beauty in his works, because everything in nature is comfortable, and there is no conscious spiritual perfusion of life and the unity of theme in some parts where differences coexist, so the characteristics of ideal beauty cannot be seen. "Beauty is the perceptual manifestation of ideas", so natural beauty must be flawed and cannot be sublimated into artistic beauty. Gardens are artificially created, and they must be transformed according to people's will in order to achieve a perfect situation.

China people discover and explore natural beauty in another way. China people are mainly looking for something in nature that can be in harmony with people's aesthetic mood and can cause * * *. The establishment of China people's natural aesthetics can be traced back to the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. Specific historical conditions forced the literati class to be indifferent to politics and invited them to visit the mountains and rivers, so they took emotion as the intermediary, reflecting the extremely rich natural beauty contained in the lakes and mountains. Although China gardens belong to natural landscape gardens in form and style, they are not simply copying or imitating nature, but refining, abstracting, generalizing and typifying on the basis of a deep understanding of natural beauty. This kind of creation does not violate the nature of compassion, on the contrary, it conforms to nature and expresses it more deeply. According to China people, aesthetics does not change nature according to people's ideas, but emphasizes the emotional correspondence between subject and object, that is, "relaxing the mind". It can play the role of communication between aesthetic subject and aesthetic object. From a higher level, we can also personalize the object through the role of "empathy". Zhuangzi's idea of "wandering about things" means that things and I can blend with each other, so as to achieve the state of forgetting myself. Therefore, the aesthetic thought of western gardening personifies nature, while China personifies nature.

Formal beauty and artistic conception beauty

Due to different attitudes towards natural beauty, the pursuit embodied in gardening art has always been emphasized. Although there is no lack of poetry in western gardening, it deliberately pursues formal beauty; Although China also attached importance to the form of gardening, he devoted himself to the beauty of artistic conception. Westerners believe that natural beauty is flawed. In order to overcome this defect and achieve a perfect situation, we must rely on some ideas to enhance the natural beauty, so as to reach the height of artistic beauty. That is, a kind of formal beauty. As early as in ancient Greece, the philosopher Pythagoras explored harmony from the perspective of numbers and put forward the golden ratio. Vitruvius in Roman period also mentioned the problem of proportion and balance in his exposition, and put forward that "proportion is a beautiful appearance and a moderate relationship when combining details". Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and others in the Renaissance also demonstrated the law of formal beauty through the human body. Hegel, on the other hand, took "the external beauty of abstract form" as the proposition, and abstractly summarized the laws of formal beauty such as unity, balance and symmetry, law and harmony. So the law of formal beauty is quite common. It not only dominates the visual arts such as architecture, painting and sculpture, but also has a great influence on the auditory arts such as music and poetry. Therefore, gardens closely related to architecture are regarded as the golden rule. The symmetrical and balanced layout, exquisite geometric pattern composition and strong sense of rhythm in western gardens clearly reflect the deliberate pursuit of formal beauty.

China pays attention to "scenery" and "emotion" in gardening, and scenery naturally belongs to the category of material form. However, its standard of measurement depends on whether it can arouse people's feelings, thus having a poetic environmental atmosphere, that is, "artistic conception." This is obviously different from the formal beauty pursued by western gardening, mainly due to the cultural background of China's gardening. There were no special gardeners in ancient China. Since Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, China's gardening has been deeply influenced by painting, poetry and literature due to the intervention of literati painters. Both poetry and painting attach great importance to the pursuit of artistic conception, which makes China's gardening with strong emotional color from the beginning. Wang Guowei of A Qing Dynasty said: Scenery is not unique, and emotion is also one of the realms in people's minds, so what can describe scenery and true feelings is called realm, otherwise it is called realm. Artistic conception can only be obtained through enlightenment, which is a psychological activity. The scenery is heartless. Therefore, the essence of garden management is to pursue artistic conception.

A good garden, whether in China or in the West, is bound to be pleasing to the eye. However, due to different emphases, western gardens give us the feeling that they are pleasing to the eye, while China gardens are intended to be pleasing to the eye.

Necessity and contingency

Western gardening follows the law of formal beauty and deliberately pursues the beauty of geometric patterns, which inevitably presents a geometric relationship, such as axial symmetry, balance and the wide application of some geometric shapes, such as straight lines, squares, circles and triangles. Although the combination changes can be varied and ever-changing, there are still laws to follow. Since western gardening deliberately pursues formal beauty, it is impossible to violate the law of formal beauty. Therefore, all elements in the garden can not be separated from the whole, but must be embedded in a certain part with a certain shape and size, so it shows a kind of inevitability that conforms to the law.

China's gardening is far from the natural mountains and rivers, and he pursues a poetic and picturesque realm. If it also attaches great importance to landscaping, then its materials, prototypes, sources and inspirations can only be explored in nature. The more natural things are, the richer they contain. Therefore, China's gardening has great randomness and contingency. Not only is the layout ever-changing, but there is no strict subordinate relationship between the whole and the part, and the structure is loose and irregular. As the saying goes, "gardening is omnipotent." Even many landscapes are consciously hidden, such as "My road is winding, passing through a sheltered depression, and the meditation room is full of flowers and trees", "There is no way out of the water, and there is another village", "The peak turns, there are pavilions and wings", which are all very poetic realms.

Compared with China and the West, western gardens show their inevitability with carefully designed patterns, while many deep and tortuous landscapes in China gardens are often unexpected and full of contingency.

Clear and fuzzy

The master-slave relationship of western gardens is clear, the key points are prominent, the relationship between each part is clear, the boundaries and spatial scope are clear, and the spatial sequence paragraphs are clear, giving people an orderly and clear impression. The main reason is that the pursuit of formal beauty in western gardens shows a regularity and inevitability by following the law of formal beauty, but anything with regularity will give people a clear sense of order. In addition, westerners are good at logical thinking and are used to analyzing things to reveal their essence. This social ideology has greatly influenced people's aesthetic habits and concepts.